East Wind Coming
by shoreleave
Summary: Jim comes home from Tarsus, but never really recovers. Please heed the warnings in the author's note.
1. Prologue

**"There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less and a cleaner, better stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared."**

 **― Arthur Conan Doyle, _His Last Bow_**

 **Author's Note** : This isn't going to be a pleasant fic. There are going to be dark twists and triggery events. It's slash. If you're looking for a "Jim and Bones are BFFs" fic or a "Pike becomes Jim's mentor" feel-good story, turn back now. You are forewarned.

* * *

 **Prologue:**

Jim is twelve when he arrives on Tarsus.

After months in transit, his legs feel a little shaky and weak as he takes his first steps on the hard-packed dirt. Maybe it's because the gravity on Tarsus is just slightly above earth normal. The ground seems to be pulling at him, weighing him down.

It'll build muscles, he thinks. He likes the idea of Tarsus changing him, molding him into something stronger. (But for the first few weeks he doesn't feel stronger at all, just exhausted.)

And it's definitely time for a change. He's spent most of his life trying to please his mother, thinking that if he were good enough or smart enough, she'd be happy. Happy enough to stay. But she keeps signing on for longer and longer missions. She's been gone for over a year now, and isn't scheduled to come back for months. Which is why he's here, on Tarsus; the courts considered this fact when they decided to put him into foster care - after his wild act of reckless self-endangerment and willful destruction of property propelled him right into the juvenile justice system.

Sam's scathing accusations, that last day they were together, still make his ears flame in embarrassment. _Always doing everything right! Good grades, obeying every stupid order…_

 _I just want you to stay,_ he hears himself saying. He must've sounded pretty pathetic, but it wasn't enough to persuade Sam.

He hasn't heard from his brother since he left. Sam probably thinks he's still in the farmhouse in Riverside, washing Frank's car-no, their _dad_ 's car, that was the point, wasn't it?-every week and hiding in his room playing battle sims on the computer.

Tarsus is about as far from Iowa as he could have hoped to get. The alien landscape is rugged and dry, with steep reddish hills in the distance. The air smells different, too: he recognizes the sweet odor of freshly harvested grain, mixed with something bitter and acrid that he can't identify.

It sends a thrum of adrenaline through his veins. It's going to be an adventure. He's on his own for the first time-well, mostly on his own, since obviously he's going to be living with a foster family and they'll probably have something to say about how he spends his time-and it's time for him to start figuring out who he really wants to be.

* * *

The courts have a fancy name for his situation- _Work-Study Custodial Care in a Developing Colony_ -but the reality is nothing like what he'd imagined (which, he's embarrassed to admit, was like something out of the American West, with somber-but-hardworking pioneer families and a one-room schoolhouse).

Of course, Frank had explained it to him in simple language, as Jim was being escorted out after the court hearing: "You're gonna work your butt off in that hell-hole, kid, and then maybe you'll finally appreciate how good you had it here."

But by that point Jim wasn't paying much attention to what Frank had to say, caught up in the heady satisfaction of _I'm-getting-out-of-here_ coupled with the thrill of impending space travel. Pissing off Frank just added a smirk to his face. Frank always was a sore loser.

But the joke's on Jim. It doesn't take long for him to realize that he's been brought to Tarsus mostly as an unpaid child laborer.

On the whole, Jim's pretty sure it's still better than living alone with an alcoholic stepfather in Riverside, but Frank is right. The chores are endless. The colony is entirely dependent on the success of the crops, and everyone has to pitch in. All the kids, Jim included, rush home after school to help out at home and in the fields, and since they don't have many modern conveniences, just getting a meal together is a full-time occupation. (That part's actually pretty much like the pioneering West, he figures, except that instead of horses and oxen they use automated robotic harvesters and biosensors and the most important building in the colony is the genmod biolab.)

Jim's put to work with the livestock, feeding and cleaning and scooping poop. It's smelly and loud, and the chores are mind-bogglingly repetitive, but at least they're building muscles. He's getting taller and broader.

Jim's foster parents-Varda and Eli-are pleasant enough to him. They don't pry into what happened to get him thrown into the foster system, and they don't ask much about his family. As long as he follows their rules and does his chores, they leave him pretty much alone. They have a four-year-old son, Tommy, who's actually pretty cute. He likes to kick a ball around with Jim in the evenings, when they have some time. Jim doesn't mind.

His mother sends him a vid message which he gets after a two-month delay. "I want to know how they're treating you," she says. Her mouth pinches into a frown. "You don't have to stay. Tell me if you want to come home. I'll come back." She pauses, and Jim feels a stab of pain at her words. "I love you, Jim."

It guts him. It makes him wonder, for the first time, if he should have refused to go to Tarsus. All this time he's been thinking mostly of himself, and he never really stopped to consider how his mother would feel. He knows the court consulted with her and she must have given her permission, but maybe she only agreed out of desperation. She was out in the black, Jim was in trouble with the law, and Frank wouldn't take care of him anymore. She must have felt that she had no choice but to let him go.

He hates that he's made his mother feel guilty. And he doesn't really want to drag her back to Iowa for him. It's bad enough that Sam's run off; she'd be miserable (and resentful and depressed) if she had to cut short her tour of duty for him.

Still, he hesitates. She's made an offer and he considers it. He's not happy on Tarsus. He's lonely, and the constant struggle for basic things he took for granted is exhausting. Varda and Eli don't really care about him; nobody does. He aches for someone to want him, to need him.

But then he looks more closely at his mother's face, paused on-screen at the end of the message. She's turned away from the camera, and her expression has changed. A second before, she was looking into his eyes with concern and sympathy, and now, she's… different. The camera's caught her in a moment of metamorphosis.

A cold sweat breaks out on his neck as he scrutinizes the image. His mother's eyes are clear and calm, and there's a small smile at the corner of her lips. It's like she's turned her emotions off, just like that.

Jim plays the end of the video again. This time he's watching for it, and it's unmistakable.

 _Tell me if you want to come home_. Jim bites his lip as his mother offers to give up everything for him, the worry and contrition evident in her gaze and in the downturned corners of her mouth. _I love you, Jim._ Then she turns away-he can see her hand reaching forward to press the screen and stop the recording-and as she does, the concern and guilt melt from her face. In an instant, her expression clears, and he can see that she's moved on. The professional mask of Lieutenant Commander Kirk is back in place. He can recognize it because it's the face she wears just before she leaves for each tour of duty.

He replays it five or six times. Each time he sees her turn away, the miserable ache inside him fades a little more, until it's been replaced by a different kind of hurt: something stubborn and bitter and cold.

Well. He's got masks, too, and he can move on, just like her. He's a _Kirk_.

"Record message," he says. "I'm doing fine, Mom," he says, putting on his most convincing smile. "Tarsus is great. Got a lot of chores, they keep us busy, but it's fine." He tells her all about Tommy and the cows.

As a parting shot, he adds, "Varda, my foster mom, says she doesn't know what she'd do without me!" He gives a little embarrassed laugh. "She says I'm part of the family now."

He doesn't hear from Winona again for over a year.

* * *

Jim's always been really smart. (Just like his mother. He's inherited more from her than just a talent for emotional detachment.) He's always been quicker than all the kids around him and half the adults. He soaks up new information like a sponge, remembers most of what he hears or reads, and he can make leaps of logical connection that most people are oblivious to. He devours everything by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and tries to hone his observational skills whenever he can.

But here's the thing: he's smart enough to realize, from a very early age, that most people don't enjoy having a kid like Jim around. He's precocious and insatiably curious, and they find that unsettling. He doesn't need his teachers' overly simplified explanations or the hours of rote practice that the other kids seem to need. (Boring. And so slow.) Other kids think he's weird; adults are bemused, annoyed, or even threatened.

Bottom line: he draws too much attention.

So from the time he entered the public educational system, he's forced himself to dumb it down. He goofs off with the other boys during play time and copies the way they stumble over their first attempts at reading. He never raises his hand and sits quietly in the back of the classroom. His teachers tell Winona that Jim's shy and polite, and a little insecure. His grades are above average, but hardly perfect.

Jim thinks of it as his secret mission: a covert operation, keeping his real talents hidden. When he's in the privacy of his own home, he can flaunt his intelligence, do science and math tutorials on his PADD, and read whatever he wants. Sam, four years older, teaches him chess and Go, then gets pissed off when Jim keeps winning. But in their family, Sam's the smartass rebel, and Jim's the quiet one. No one really pays much attention to what Jim does in his free time.

Outside, in public, Jim keeps his head down. He wants to have friends his own age, and he knows that friendship comes with a price. He can't be seen as too different, except at sports, where he can try his best. Being a good athlete won't get him ostracized, but unfortunately, Jim's always been small and scrawny compared to the other kids his age.

Then Sam says some harsh words and leaves, and Jim crashes the Corvette.

By the time he gets to Tarsus, he realizes that trying to be good isn't a useful credo to live by. (Didn't stop Winona and Sam from leaving him, did it?) Fuck that, he figures. No more good, nerdy little Jimmy Kirk. He'll be who he is, and damn the consequences. He's alone now anyway, so what does it matter? On Tarsus, nobody cares how smart he is; he's there to shovel cowshit, babysit Tommy, and help Eli in the fields.

Then a few months after he arrives, Varda and Eli are called in to a special conference at the school. When they come back, they don't look happy. All they'll tell him is that starting tomorrow, he'll be having special tutors in math, science, and engineering, and he's not going to work in the cowshed anymore after school. He's going to work in the biolab as a research assistant.

That's when he first meets Dr. Rafael Kodos, head of the research division of genetically modified crops.


	2. I am become death

According to the court-ordered psychological evaluation Jim had before he was sent to Tarsus (which yes, he saw, and no, he doesn't really agree with), he suffers from a fundamental sense of insecurity.

Growing up in a fatherless home with a frequently-absent mother who was emotionally distant, he tends to be socially withdrawn and to question his own self-worth. He's prone to impulsive behavior and has problems with authority figures, but at the same time has an unacknowledged longing for a strong father figure in his life. He's at risk for violent behavior and delinquency, promiscuity, substance abuse, and social maladjustment.

Which is a fancy way of saying he's got daddy issues. (Mother issues too. Obviously. Basically, he's a mess.) He craves attention and affection, and he's got a seething anger just under the surface. Sometimes he hates himself. He has a burning desire to prove himself, to be seen as special, worthy, _loved_.

So it's not that surprising that he's desperate for Dr. Kodos to notice him.

Dr. Kodos-tall, thin, with classic Eastern-European features-is easily the most charismatic man Jim's ever met. He's brilliant. (The other scientists are constantly saying so. "Take it to Rafael. If anyone can figure this out, it's him." "Rafael sent me a Wan's paper on cryogenic _in situ_ hybridization. Really clarified things.") He's always at the center when anything important is happening in the lab, and from what Jim can see, he's involved in the details of all aspects of the genmod project. He radiates energy, confidence, and enthusiasm. Everybody seems to like him.

Jim watches Kodos bustling around the lab, interacting with various teams, encouraging and prodding them on. Wherever he goes, he's larger than life, the focus of everybody's attention. Jim likes him too, even though he's never spoken to him. There's something naturally fatherly about him (maybe that damned psych report is right). He has an air of authority; he's someone who people can instinctively trust.

The biolab's main job, as everyone knows, is to develop food sources. Tarsus is a harsh, alien environment, hot and dry. It's native enzymes are toxic to humans. The colony has some food stores that they brought from Earth, but that's a temporary measure. They need to grow food that's compatible with human digestive systems, otherwise the colony won't survive and they'll have to evacuate. The biolab is working on genetically modified crops.

Bottom line: Dr. Kodos and his lab are trying to ensure that everybody eats. And lives.

Jim has a fantasy running in his head about how he manages to impress the lead scientist with his intelligence and quick mind. He's not sure how exactly that happens, but afterwards, he imagines, Dr. Kodos takes Jim under his wing, lets him tag along while he moves about, solving problems and orchestrating the joint efforts of his teams. Jim knows he'd do anything for a mentor like him.

Jim just might have a little case of hero worship for Dr. Kodos. (Or maybe it's a crush. Possibly.)

***eastwindcoming***

Unfortunately, Dr. Kodos doesn't even know Jim's there. If he notices Jim at all, it's when he's giving him an impatient look because his coffee's not as hot as he likes or his evening meal's just a little late.

The initial excitement at being chosen to be a research assistant doesn't last long, once he realizes that it really means "menial laborer who has to do whatever the biolab staff wants." He washes equipment and cleans the labs, runs out to the dining hall to bring everybody their meals, delivers samples, gets coffee, and records field measurements under Tarsus' hot double suns. It's a step up from dealing with cow hygiene, but not by much.

The whole situation bothers him. Working with the cows was boring and tedious, but at the biolab Jim's surrounded by arrogant assholes convinced of their own superiority. (And he's at least as smart as they are. They just don't know it.) He hates being ignored and resents being underestimated, but he's well aware of the fact that he's just a foster kid on Tarsus. Varda's gotten more short-tempered with him because his work hours at the lab are longer than they were in the cowshed, and Jim doesn't have as much time to look after Tommy or help out at home.

Jim's tired, but Eli's started giving him more work in the fields on the weekends, almost like a punishment. "I don't give a damn if the colony's assigned you to clean the lavatories or shine the scientists' boots," he tells Jim. "Your first responsibility is to this family. We brought you here, and don't you forget it."

Jim's afraid to complain. They could send him back to Riverside, back to Frank. Jim can't even contemplate it.

So he nods and keeps his mouth shut. He studies hard at school in the mornings in his new advanced science tutorials, then runs over to the biolab where he cleans and fetches until late in the evening. He keeps his resentment to himself.

At the lab, he's as unobtrusive as he can be. He's polite and subservient, no matter what they ask him to do. (Including cleaning the bathrooms. Eli's right.) He falls back on old habits, hating himself a little for it. But he doesn't know what else to do. He knows he's being used, but he's not being _abused_ , and there's a difference.

He observes and listens, though, trying to learn as much as he can without letting on how much he knows. It passes the time, and who knows when the knowledge will come in handy. (And maybe he can impress Dr. Kodos sometime, if he ever asks Jim his opinion about the research. Which isn't likely.)

So he spends the first weeks at the biolab slinking around, lurking at the edges of conversations, getting the meals just a tad slower than he could, and swallowing back his retorts. ( _Of course I'd be happy to clean up the coffee you just spilled and get you some more. My name? Jim Kirk, thanks for asking. Oh, and fuck you, too._ )

* * *

Jim finally gets his chance a little over two months after he's begun working at the lab. He's wiping down the counters with disinfectant, eyes down as usual, ears pricked up. Dr. Kodos is there, consulting with one of the teams. The scientists are completely focused on the results displayed on the monitor, not reacting as Jim sidles around, moving closer and closer so he can hear.

"The yields on the transgenic potatoes are promising." Dr. Mendez, one of the geneticists, is pointing to something. "Look at these sugar enzymes."

Jim takes an unobtrusive step to the side, antiseptic wipe still in hand, and cocks his head at an angle that allows him to see where Mendez is gesturing. He squints, trying to read the small font from where he's standing: sucrose and fructose, polypeptide chains.

But Kodos is shaking his head. "The viral vectors are unstable. Take a look, here," he points, "and here."

Jim does, unconsciously stepping forward to peer more closely at the graphs. He'd like to understand what's got the scientists so intrigued, but it's all way above his head. He's been getting special tutoring in biology, chemistry, and math at school, but he still doesn't have more than a superficial understanding of what's going on in the lab.

He suddenly becomes aware that Dr. Kodos is eyeing him, an amused smile quirking his lips. "Looks like our little lab rat's got something to say," he says, and Jim feels his cheeks redden.

 _Little lab rat_ , great. Kodos doesn't even know his name. And after that introduction, anything he might have had to say is going to sound dumb. So he shakes his head, taking a step back. He sprays more disinfectant on the countertops and busies himself wiping them down again.

Dr. Mendez seems to sense Jim's embarrassment. "Leave him alone, Rafael. Hey, kid, isn't it time for your dinner run?"

Jim gives a sharp nod and turns away, biting back the response he wants to make, which would have something to do with the ten extra kilos Dr. Mendez is sporting around his midsection and just who could use a little pre-dinner run.

"Let him answer, Javier. If you have a question," Kodos presses, looking directly at Jim, "you should ask." His expression is noncommital but his eyes are appraising, and Jim's heart rate speeds up a little. He's being tested, but he doesn't have a clue what the right answer is. Whatever questions he has are probably stupid and a waste of time.

But what the hell, Jim hates to be seen as meek and unassuming. "I, uh, don't understand about the viral vectors," he blurts out, voice wavering just a little.

Mendez laughs. "That's because you're twelve years old-"

"I'm _thirteen_." His birthday was just a couple of weeks ago, but still.

"-and you'll need some higher education before you can make any sense of what we're doing here. Go on, kid, everybody's getting hungry."

Jim ducks his head and heads for the door as quickly as he can.

 _Idiot, idiot, idiot!_ The memory's already making him cringe. Could he have sounded any more nervous and stupid? _I, uh, don't understand…_ He should have kept his mouth shut.

Thirty minutes later, he's struggling down the corridor, weighed down with two large hotbags filled with containers of food and utensils from the dining hall. The straps chafe against his shoulders and the bags slap against his thighs, hampering his movements. He slows down a little more. Fatass Dr. Mendez can just take his dinner and choke on it.

Maybe Jim can ask to be put back to work shoveling shit in the barn; at least the cows never humiliated him.

His comm beeps, and he sighs. It's probably Eli, wanting him to check something in the fields on his way back from the lab, or Varda, needing him to watch Tommy. Still, his shoulders are aching from the weight of the bags, and he doesn't mind the excuse for a quick break. He sets the bags down, stretches his back and shoulders, and then taps the comm screen.

It's a personal message from Rafael Kodos. Jim blinks in surprise, realizing that Dr. Kodos must know his name, or took the trouble to learn it, in order to find his comm address.

" _There are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago."-J. Robert Oppenheimer._

 _Your curiosity should be encouraged. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Use these to further your learning._

 _-Rafael_

There are three attached documents. One is a basic textbook on genetically modified organisms in agriculture. The other two are research papers, both authored by Kodos himself.

Jim stays up long into the night, reading and making notes to himself. Next time he's around Dr. Kodos, he vows to himself, he'll ask intelligent questions.

***eastwindcoming***

The following week, Jim's hanging around at the edge of the circle of scientists and biotechs when Dr. Kodos is consulting with them. Jim's quiet, watching and listening as usual, when Kodos suddenly asks, "Jim, have you been reading the information I sent you?"

"Yes, sir," Jim says, a little hesitantly. _Here it comes._

"And do you understand what we're discussing here?"

All heads swivel toward him. _Shit_. Jim's breath catches in his throat, but he forces himself to say, "You're trying to figure out why that fungus is resistant to the pesticides."

Kodos smiles. "Correct. And why would that be a problem?"

"Because it's toxic. We can't eat the wheat if the fungus attacks it."

Kodos turns back to the group. "You see? In simplest terms, that's what we should be focusing on. Life and death. The wheat crop is our priority."

"But Rafael-" Kodos is engulfed by a half-dozen raised voices, and Jim gives a little sigh of relief. Maybe stating the obvious isn't brilliant, but it's good enough for now.

After that, he notices that the scientists start calling him Jim instead of "kid" or "lab boy," and Dr. Mendez, in particularly, makes a point of encouraging him to ask questions. About once a week, he receives new reading material by comm from Dr. Kodos. It's bioengineering studies for the most part, but also Darwin's _On the Origin of Species,_ a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, and Osborn's philosophy of eugenics, which he studies and tries to understand.

Every once in a while, he makes an intelligent comment. Sometimes Dr. Kodos is there when he does it and he gives Jim a knowing smile, like _That's what I expect from you._

He's starting to feel like he belongs, like he's making a contribution to something important.

So he decides to delve a little deeper into the biolab research, hoping to understand on a deeper level. If he can get access to the research data, he'll be in a much better position to contribute. It's a little complicated because of the lab's security, but Jim keeps an eye out for an opportunity. Eventually, he manages to position himself right next to Dr. Oren, the microbiologist, just as she's accessing the system. He memorizes the password and the entry sequence.

Later on that evening, while most of the scientists are at dinner, he enters his biometric ID and sets up an account for himself.

After that, in between running errands and cleaning, he downloads copies of reports to his PADD on hybrid vigor in crossbred triticale strains and genetically-engineered proteins that are resistant to mildew. He struggles over the words at night, looking up the chemical compounds and the protein chains, learning about cross-pollination and subgenic modification.

* * *

Eight months later, there's a tension in the colony-really a growing dread and a sense of doom-that's increasing day by day.

The wheat and potato crops are failing. Jim's with Eli in the fields on the weekends and early in the mornings, and he can see the bluish, powdery mildew growing along the wheat stalks, fluffy and white on the underside of the potato leaves. Like the other farmers, Eli and Jim spray fungicides, which don't work, then destroy whole sections of the crops, trying to stop the spread of the infection.

Varda's gone quiet and worried, trying to be more and more creative in stretching the dwindling rations each family gets from the colony stores. Varda and Eli and even Jim have reduced their own portions in order to keep Tommy from leaving the table hungry, but they're all getting thinner. Even tired and overworked as he is, Jim still tries to play with Tommy in the evenings when he can. Tommy can't understand why everybody's always so busy and exhausted. He's five.

At the lab, the scientists are nearly frantic, working around the clock in a desperate attempt to find a solution. The fungus that's attacking the crops is a variant of _Podosphaera_ family, long known on Earth as a plant pathogen, but easily managed with modern techniques. The scientists speculate endlessly on where the fungus originated; their best hypothesis, supported by Dr. Kodos, is that it was inadvertently brought to the colony in one of the early transports.

Dr. Mendez doesn't accept that theory, and Jim hears him arguing one day with Kodos. "Rafael, you know that every transport was sanitized and irradiated. And there was no hint of fungal infestation for the first two years! Why do you keep pushing that inane theory?"

"We weren't checking carefully enough," Kodos counters, his voice calm and level in counterpoint to Mendez' rising frustration. "It's the only viable explanation."

"Is it? I have another explanation. And proof." Jim watches them carefully. Whatever Mendez has found, he seems enraged about it. And Kodos isn't acting the way Jim expects; he doesn't ask questions, or involve any of their colleagues.

Instead, Kodos draws Mendez to a corner of the lab, speaking in a low, menacing tone and shaking Mendez' shoulder a little. Jim can't hear them, but he can see the way Mendez' face darkens. He looks furious and he's shaking his head.

 _You're wrong_ , Kodos says. Jim can read his lips well enough to understand that.

Then his expression clears of emotion-which sends a chill down Jim's spine, because it looks just like what his mother does-and he stalks out of the room. After a minute, Dr. Mendez walks out too, but heads in the opposite direction.

Jim can't get the exchange out of his mind. Dr. Kodos was clearly furious at whatever Dr. Mendez was saying, and Jim's been observing the lab dynamics for long enough to know that Kodos has a mean streak and he doesn't like to be challenged. And he's sure Dr. Mendez has crossed some kind of line.

Jim's read enough to know that the fungus isn't the innocuous Earth strain that's been around for centures. It's resistant to everything they've tried, and that implies genetic manipulation. But he can't imagine why anyone would deliberately develop a pathogen that would strangle their food supply. It's suicidal.

Then he thinks about the eugenics papers Dr. Kodos has been not-so-subtly tossing in his direction for the past months, and he has a sudden, terrible suspicion.

Later that evening, Jim accesses the biolab records and downloads Dr. Mendez' latest reports and work to his PADD. Jim's already familiar with most of the research, but his last memo- _Conclusive proof of bioengineering in Podosphaera Xenobii_ -freezes Jim's blood in his veins.

Jim reads it over and over, until he's practically committed it to memory. Dr. Mendez is accusing Kodos of engineering and releasing the pathogen on purpose and in secret, an act which will put the colony in immediate peril. With the grain and potato crops wiped out, there won't be enough food to feed them all. The memo hasn't been sent yet, but it's addressed to the Governor of Tarsus. Jim knows that the minute the information gets out, it'll be explosive.

Jim wakes the next day groggy and disoriented, after little more than two hours' sleep. He's spent the night debating what to do with the information. In the end, he figures he should probably talk to Dr. Mendez himself, even if it means getting in trouble at the lab for accessing secured information. But the truth is more important.

***eastwindcoming***

It doesn't work out that way. "There's been a tragedy," Eli announces to them all at breakfast. It turns out that Dr. Javier Mendez, one of the founders of Tarsus and a leading scientist, has been found dead in his home. "Heart attack, they say. DId you know him, Jim?"

Jim can only nod.

The entire colony attends the funeral, the first one on Tarsus, and Dr. Kodos gives the eulogy. He says all the right words, about Dr. Mendez' dedication and brilliance and loyalty and friendship, but Jim's watching his eyes, and they're _cold_.

Jim lays low at the biolab for the next few days, trying not to draw attention as he ponders what to do. It's harder to concentrate now because he's hungry, and the highlight of each evening is when he's sent off to the dining hall to get dinner for the lab crew. He can eat his fill on his way back with nobody the wiser.

So he does his best thinking in the evenings. He goes over and over the problem. He knows what Mendez was accusing Kodos of, and he's fairly sure that there are others who Mendez shared his ideas with. But ever since Mendez' untimely death, things at the lab have been subdued. Nobody dares to cross Kodos outright. There's an atmosphere of fear, above and beyond the worries about the food supply. Jim doesn't actually have any proof that Kodos caused Mendez' death, but he doesn't know that it's _not_ true, either.

What he does know is that Kodos is spending more and more time locked up in one of the conference rooms with a handful of the other scientists and other staff. He has no idea what they talk about in those meetings. He's tried accessing the records, but they don't seem to be on the main system.

He decides to send a copy of the memo anonymously to Governor Hammond. He uses one of the biolab computers and a proxy address so it can't be traced back to him.

***eastwindcoming***

The next day, to his surprise, he's summoned by comm to the conference room during one of the secretive meetings. _This can't be good_ , he thinks, although he's hoping that maybe they just need their water glasses refilled or something along those lines.

Rafael Kodos is there, sitting at a large table along with nine other men and women, all of whom hold important positions in the lab. "Come forward, Jim," Kodos tells him almost kindly, which doesn't do anything to calm his quaking nerves. "We have some questions for you."

"Yes, sir." Being polite probably won't save him. But it's worth a try.

Jim can intuitively sense something ominous and deadly in the room. Kodos isn't the fatherly mentor he once believed in (for way too fucking long, what a naive dumbass he's been). In this room, Kodos is obviously some kind of leader, but Jim has no idea where he's leading or why. From what Jim can see, he doesn't seem to be too concerned with the fact that he's brought disaster and starvation down on Tarsus.

Jim wonders if he's going to get out of this room alive.

"It's been brought to my attention that there has been a security breach regarding the biolab database," Kodos begins, and Jim's heart starts galloping in his chest. "Some of the research in this facility is top secret, Jim. Only certain members of the team can access all of the reports. Imagine my surprise when I discovered recently that _you_ have top secret clearance."

Looking around the room at the other faces-some dispassionate, others openly hostile-he knows that there's nothing he can possibly say to fix this. These people have already judged and sentenced him.

"Uh…" Jim stalls. "That must be a mistake."

"Not only do you have access, but it seems that you've been reading reports that were never meant for your eyes. Particularly Dr. Mendez' last ravings about the fungus." Kodos looks at him sternly, his mouth a flat line. "And don't lie to me again, Jim."

Jim tries for partial truth. "I just wanted to understand what was going on in the lab. So I could make more of a contribution. I wanted to read up on the research to understand better." He swallows. "You told me to be curious… remember? You sent me papers and textbooks to read."

"Ah. So I did." Kodos nods thoughtfully, and Jim has a brief glimmer of hope that maybe Kodos will believe him and leave it there.

"I'm sorry," Jim tries. "All I was doing was trying to understand. I wanted to help, to get to know the research. I'll delete everything from my PADD and my comm, I promise."

"We've already done that for you," Kodos says, pointing to two small gadgets on the table, which Jim notices for the first time. _Oh, crap_. If they've got his PADD, they'll have a record of exactly what he's been reading.

"Uh… okay. Thanks," he says awkwardly. "Can I have them back, then?"

"We'll return them to your foster parents later. What we'd all like to know, Jim, is whether you've spoken to anyone about what you've been reading."

"No," he says quickly. He hasn't actually _spoken_ to anybody, although he's sent the memo to the Governor's office. But maybe they don't know about that.

Kodos nods and leans back, apparently satisfied. "I'll need your word that you won't discuss any of the research or any other communication from the biolab. You must forget it. You're only a child and your understanding of sophisticated bioengineering research can only be superficial at best."

Jim nods his head in relief, hardly daring to breathe. "Yes, sir."

"That'll be all, then. Go home."

Jim nods and leaves. He's not sure exactly what just happened, but he knows he's not out of danger.

***eastwindcoming***

The next morning at breakfast, Eli informs them that everyone in the colony has been summoned to an emergency assembly on the plaza outside the biolab. "They don't have room for the whole colony all at once, so there are going to be two assemblies," Eli tells them, scanning over the message on his comm. "We're all on the first list."

"What's going on?" Varda asks, her face drawn and pale. "Is this about the crops?"

Eli shrugs. "Has to be. Maybe they're going to evacuate. Or if we're lucky, the biolab's finally found a way to eradicate the blight. Then we can all get back to work."

"And eat," Varda agrees, nodding fervently. "Amen to that."

"Can I see the list, Eli?" Jim asks. "I just want to check if there's anybody else from my class on our list."

It's fortunate that Jim's a quick reader and has a near-eidetic memory. He scans over the first list, where he quickly finds his own name as well as Eli and Varda and Tommy. There are plenty of kids from his school, neighbors, and even-he frowns-Governor Hammond and his family. About half of the biolab workers, scientists and biotechs alike.

He taps his finger on the second list and scrolls down. His suspicions are confirmed. Everyone who was in the Kodos' secret council-as well as their families-are on that list. Jim's science tutors are there, too, as well a few of the biolab staff. Particularly those close to Kodos.

Rafael Kodos' name doesn't appear on either list.

"We should get going, don't want to be late," Eli says, pushing up from the table. "Jim, you keep an eye on Tommy."

Jim reaches numb fingers toward Tommy's hand. He has a terrible feeling about this assembly, but he's hoping against hope that he's wrong.

When they reach the plaza, joining the four thousand other colonists on the first list, Jim isn't surprised to see Rafael Kodos standing behind the raised podium.

When Kodos begins to speak, all Jim can think is of Robert Oppenheimer's famous quote, _I am become death, the destroyer of worlds._


	3. Some animals

**A/N:** **Warnings for non-graphic but disturbing content.**

I've been a Star Trek fan since the 70s, and I recently went back and watched "The Conscience of the King" to make sure I had my facts right about Tarsus.

Since the 2009 movie, dozens of writers-many of them wonderfully creative and much more talented than me-have contributed to what could be considered an alternate Tarsus mythology. The story goes something like this: Jim, often calling himself JT, is sent to Tarsus to get him away from his (possibly abusive) home environment. After the massacre - it's a toss-up as to whether Jim's on the good list or the bad list - Jim plays a heroic role in rescuing (lots of) other children and hiding them / finding food for them while waiting for rescue. Sometimes he's portrayed as the leader of a sort of children's rebellion, or as Kodos' protege or pupil. I'll admit, I've played my own role as a fanfic writer in buying into this legend.

But it's important to remember that this is all _fanon_ -a fandom construct-and not canon. Watch the episode; none of this happens. Jim was on Tarsus at the time of the massacre, and he's one of nine eyewitnesses who survived the massacre and can identify Governor Kodos. That's about it.

I wanted to see what would happen if I followed Jim Kirk step by step through that mess. I see him as a kid, albeit resourceful and smart, but not really that extraordinary - or not yet, anyway. Realistically, how would a thirteen-year-old react in such a situation?

I'm a little nervous posting this, because I've rarely seen the Tarsus massacre portrayed in fanfiction. It's alluded to or skipped over, and with good reason-it's nauseating to imagine, but it's certainly no worse than some of the horrors of the last century. It hits close to home.

I think, for the purposes of this story, it's important to understand what happens to Jim and how it affects him. Anyway, I'm looking forward to your comments! Constructive criticism is always appreciated.

* * *

Kodos announces that Governor Hammond resigned last night because of the food crisis and has appointed him Governor instead. (Everybody but Jim gives a little shocked _Ohhh_. Jim mumbles _Oh shit_ but he's not shocked.)

Jim's never been in such a large crowd of people - over four thousand, according to the list he read. The huge plaza - usually the site of community celebrations - is filled almost completely. Jim's standing near Eli and Varda, at a good distance from the podium. But he can see and hear Kodos clearly on the stage, his face projected on enormous screens around the edges of the plaza.

The current governing cabinet has been disbanded, Kodos says, replaced by an emergency cabinet with expanded powers. Kodos presents the new members of the cabinet one by one as they join him on the raised stage in the front of the plaza. Jim recognizes them all from the conference room when he was questioned. (He knew they were planning something. But how could he have imagined _this_?)

Jim's still not sure what _this_ is, exactly.

As his first action, Kodos is declaring a state of emergency, suspending the Tarsus charter.

Jim's not listening closely as Kodos explains the new laws - something about plenary powers, search and seizure, and unlawful assembly. He feels a little disconnected from himself, like what's happening isn't real. It's like something out of an old movie. He can't really take it in. A _militia_ , Kodos is saying. _To keep the peace and enforce the new laws._ How can this really be happening? His mind keeps focusing on little details that jump out at him from the crowd: Governor Hammond standing not far from him, his face white, looking stunned. A pair of toddlers, oblivious to the drama, chasing each other in circles and giggling. Kodos' composed expression, magnified a hundred times, his eyes calm and reassuring. (But Jim knows it's a mask.)

He pulls Tommy a little closer to him and starts backing away slowly, instinctively heading for the edge of the crowd at the south end of the plaza. Maybe it's silly, but he wants to put as much space between himself and Kodos as he can. Eli and Varda don't notice what he's doing; they're deep in a whispered conversation, heads together. Varda's face is pinched with worry; Eli looks like he's trying to calm her down.

Kodos' voice is deep and sonorous, booming out confidently over the muttering of the crowd. There's no need to evacuate the colony, he says. He explains how the biolab's on the verge of a breakthrough in controlling the outbreak of the fungus and as an added precaution, they've contacted the Federation for assistance. "Relief ships are on their way with supplies," he assures the crowd. "I spoke to Admiral MacKenzie myself last night."

There's a spontaneous burst of applause; Kodos smiles broadly and waits for the crowd to settle down. "The worst is over. Tarsus _will_ survive this crisis."

It's crazy. People are smiling, clapping each other on the back, hugging. Jim's appalled. _What the hell's wrong with everybody?_ he wonders. _Don't they realize it can't possibly be this easy?_

Jim wants to believe it. He really does. But he can't. He knows there's been no breakthrough at the lab. Dr. Mendez made it clear in his memo that everything they've tried has been ineffective.

And Tarsus is a Federation colony, under Federation jurisdiction. Jim had to read the Articles of the Federation for his history class, and the Guarantees. Even in an emergency, the colonists have civil rights, don't they?

The jittery anxiety he felt on the way to the plaza is exploding into full-fledged alarm.

He keeps angling backward through the press of bodies, pulling Tommy along. There are too many people here, surrounding him, cheering and chattering, and it's making him panicky. He'll feel safer if he can just get a little space, where he can step apart from everyone and _breathe_. There's something he's missing here, and he has to figure out what's really going on.

"Where's Mama?" Tommy asks, looking worried. "There's too many people here."

"I'm taking you to her."

"But she's over there!" Tommy points. "Turn around. You're going the wrong way."

"This is a short cut. We'll go around the crowd." He shoulders his way past the press of bodies, dragging an unwilling Tommy ("Lemme go! I want Daddy!") behind him. There's still a hint of the cool morning breeze in the air, but Jim can feel himself starting to sweat. Everywhere, people are talking, murmuring, whispering-an incessant blur of sound in his ears, coupled with Kodos' deep voice blasting over the plaza, cutting through it all.

Kodos is talking about rations. The previous governing cabinet, he says, was overly cautious in distributing the food stores. "I've spent many a sleepless night pained by the thought of children going hungry."

" _I'm_ hungry," Tommy says, nodding his head in agreement. "Jim! I want something to eat."

"In a little bit." He pulls Tommy further to the right. They're nearing the edge of the plaza, finally, near the east wing of the biolab.

Near the service _door_ of the biolab. Which Jim has access to. Or at least he did, up till yesterday. Maybe it'll still open for him… If things get bad, he and Tommy can slip inside and hide.

But Jim's thoughts don't make it much past _Thank God_ before they skid to a stop at _Oh crap_.

There's a uniformed guard standing at attention just three meters away from the door. Part of Kodos' new militia, obviously. He's staring impassively out at the crowd, gripping a phaser rifle loosely in his hands. There's no way Jim and Tommy could slip past him without being caught.

In fact, he realizes, there are guards posted at intervals all around the edge of the plaza. His breath catches in his throat. _This is very bad,_ he thinks. The plaza is surrounded- _they're_ surrounded-by armed guards. No one's going anywhere except where Kodos wants them to go. Everyone on the first list has been herded here together, but it's still not clear why.

The guard on his right is Amos Voigt from two farms down. Eli's friendly with his father. The Voigts are on the second list, Jim immediately recalls.

Two lists, and Jim's obviously on the _wrong_ list.

"The rations you were given were barely enough to keep you alive and on your feet," he hears Kodos saying. "Many of you are too weakened to work in the fields. This is completely unacceptable." Jim blinks in surprise, considering. Maybe that's the plan: they're all going to be forced to work in the fields while everybody on the good list gets to rest inside and conserve their energy. It even makes a certain amount of sense.

Jim takes a minute to appreciate the irony. His life must have reached a new all-time low, if forced labor doesn't seem like such a bad alternative. He can just hear Frank saying _I told you so_.

"But this was completely unnecessary. Now that relief ships are on their way, there's no reason to be so cautious. There is plenty of food on Tarsus. As of this morning, we will be implementing a new rationing order. Today, the remainder of the food stores will be distributed to the colonists. You'll have enough to eat: flour, rice, vegetables, protein, and more. Children will no longer go hungry! Every family will receive a fair amount, according to the number of family members."

There's a thunderous burst of applause. Tommy jumps up and down, caught up in the excitement, and even Jim has a moment or delirious hope as he fantasizes about the huge meal Varda will cook that night.

Then he looks again at Kodos' huge, projected visage, and there's no mistaking the cold look in his eyes. _This is all a ruse_ , he thinks in horrified understanding. _The militia and the phaser rifles and the bad list,_ these _are what we should be paying attention to. Kodos is just providing the distraction._

When the crowd is quiet again, Kodos explains: heads of families will be called to the storage warehouse in groups of one hundred to get their rations. The militia is there to make sure order is maintained during the distribution process.

Jim eyes the huge warehouse, about five hundred meters north of the main plaza. He's never been inside, but like everyone, he's heard what it contains: enormous stores of flour, rice, dried vegetables, soy protein, cooking oil, and other staples, plus fodder for the livestock - tons of food brought to Tarsus on the first ships. Over the past few months, Eli's gone there once a week to collect their meager, barely-sufficient rations.

He has a sudden, crazy notion that Kodos is going to lead them all into the warehouse and gun them down.

Jim shakes his head to get rid of the image. His imagination is running wild. Kodos isn't going to slaughter them inside the warehouse where all their food is stored.

There's got to be another explanation. It's more likely everybody on the first list is going to get less food than the favored ones on the other list. It even makes a certain kind of twisted sense.

It reminds him of a line from a very old book he once read. _All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others._ Kodos probably read that book too.

Now he understands why the militia is there. Once people begin realizing their neighbors are getting more food than they are, things could get ugly. He wonders if the warehouse is going to be used as a sort of prison. Tarsus has no jail.

Kodos begins calling out the first names from a list: _John Porter, Elton Hammond, Peter Riley, Lucas Hansen, Park Tae Jun, Simon Clark._ Jim can see men all over the plaza pushing their way to the podium. He stops to watch. As each man arrives at the podium, his ID is checked against a list and he's shunted off to an area to the right of the stage. After about fifteen minutes the first group of men begins marching toward the warehouse, accompanied by a couple of guards. After a minute, they disappear from his view.

Kodos calls the next group, and the next, and the crowd starts to thin out a little. (Jim's listening carefully, but he can't hear any screaming. So nobody's being massacred in the warehouse. That was a crazy idea anyhow. The men are just getting rations and then they'll all go home.) The women are milling around talking, and the children, bored with all the waiting, start running around.

"There's Kevin!" Tommy shouts, pointing. Jim knows Kevin Riley, a little red-headed boy who lives next door and is in Tommy's class. "I wanna go play with him, okay, Jim?"

He tries to tug his hand free, but Jim won't let him. "You stick with me, Tommy. Your mom told me to watch you, and I want to stand right here."

Tommy complains and pouts a little, but Jim stands firm. His sense of impending disaster hasn't abated. He's not sure what's going on, but they might have to move fast, and he wants Tommy right there with him.

Every so often, he hears an irritating, high-pitched whine, like a power strip overload. It lasts for about thirty seconds, then subsides. At first he thinks it's coming over the loudspeaker, but Kodos drones on and on, name after name, without pause. Jim's not the only one who notices; every time he hears the unpleasant whine, he can see people - mostly women, now - all over the plaza, shaking their heads, cringing a little and looking around, trying to find the source of the sound.

Kodos is now calling for the families to join the men and help them carry the rations back to their homes. "Finally," one of the women says. "It's getting hot out here." Heads nod in agreement.

Kodos is smiling encouragingly. "I know you've been waiting for a long time, but if you all cooperate, the process will go faster. Wait until your names are called. Form an orderly line. Stay calm, there is no need to push forward."

The high whine comes again, setting his teeth on edge. With fewer people in the crowd, it seems louder.

"I think I know what that sound is," Jim hears an older woman say, and he snaps his head around to face her. It's May Gordon, one of the teachers at his school. Her eyes are wide. "I think - Doesn't it sound like phaser fire?"

Jim clutches Tommy's hand reflexively and pulls him closer, oblivious to the boy's cries of "Stop it, Jim, lemme go!" _Oh shit, oh shit,_ he thinks. Could it really be? He's never heard a phaser fired in real life. In the action vids he likes to watch, they use special effects. It doesn't sound at all like what he's been hearing.

He tries to think how many times he's heard the high-pitched sound; over a dozen times in the last two hours, at least. A cold shiver runs down his spine.

Fourteen groups have left the plaza. 1,400 men, give or take.

Concentrated phaser fire, sustained for twenty seconds, would be enough to kill a hundred people.

Jim's heart starts pounding furiously.

Women are crowding around May, bombarding her with questions. "What?" "Are you sure?" "How can you tell?"

"We've got to stop this!" one woman shouts. "Don't join the lines!"

"Where are my children?" another woman cries. "Lana! Bree!"

"It's phaser fire!" someone shrieks, loud enough to be heard by everyone in the near vicinity - including the guards, who are now striding toward the increasingly-hysterical women. All over the plaza, Jim can hear women yelling to each other, racing around grabbing for their kids. Children are crying, caught up in the panic.

"Jim, what's happening? Where's mama?"

"Silence!" Kodos thunders from the podium. "All of you! Stay calm and line up as your names are called."

Jim watches, frozen in place, as a young woman clutching a toddler in her arms suddenly breaks away from the crowd near the back of the plaza and starts running. Seconds later, she's followed by another woman holding the hands of two boys Tommy's age, and within seconds, there are women and children fleeing in every direction.

"Stop! This is your only warning!" Kodos' amplified voice resonates across the plaza. "Guards, you have your orders. Open fire!"

Jim watches in horror as streams of focused particle beams shoot out from the guards' phaser rifles, cutting the fleeing colonists down in their tracks.

The plaza is a scene of frenzied chaos. His ears are overwhelmed by the screams of terrified children, Kodos' demands for order spilling from the loudspeakers and the high-frequency whine of the phasers. Next to him Tommy is wailing hysterically, calling for his mother.

The guards are running after the women, and that sudden realization breaks through his paralysis.

Jim scoops Tommy up, slaps a hand over his mouth, and makes a dash for the biolab. _Let me in, let me in,_ is is the mantra blazing furiously through his head as he places his other hand against the biometric sensor next to the service door. To his immense relief, the door slides open and Jim ducks inside.

Once the door closes behind him, shutting out the awful noise from the plaza, it's eerily quiet. It takes his ears a few seconds to adjust to the sudden change. Still holding Tommy tightly against his chest, he heads cautiously down the east corridor, trying to slow his breathing. ( _Don't think about it. Don't. Think._ ) There doesn't seem to be anyone around, but the lab might not be deserted. He needs to find a place to hide Tommy.

The first two office doors he tries are locked, but the washroom at the end of the corridor is open. "Stay here and wait for me," he tells Tommy. "Don't make any noise. I'll come back, I promise."

Tommy shakes his head and grabs for his hand, but Jim turns around and runs out.

* * *

He comes back for Tommy an hour later, bringing a gift: a half-eaten sandwich he found in one of the garbage bins.

Tommy's face is red and splotchy, wet with tears and snot. "Where'd you go, Jim?" he whispers.

"I went up on the roof." Jim used to climb up the access stairs to the roof once a week, to clean the filters on the air purifier. The roof is a perfect vantage point - overlooking both the plaza and the storage warehouse to the north.

"Did you see my mama and daddy?"

Jim shakes his head. "No."

 _The women and children remaining in the plaza are lined up in orderly rows, standing quietly. The guards have moved in and are standing close by, their rifles trained on them. The sight of the dozens of dead bodies scattered around the perimeter of the plaza sends a shudder of horror through him._

"Did they go to get food for us?"

"I don't know, Tommy."

" _The revolution is successful, but survival depends on drastic measures. Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society. Your lives mean slow death to the more valued members of the colony. Therefore I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered." Kodos pauses. "Let the next group move forward."_

"I'm still hungry, Jim."

"Me too."

 _He can see the edge of what looks like an enormous pit dug just behind the food warehouse. He might have seen a big pile of bodies, but he can't be sure because he's turned his head aside to throw up._

Tommy falls asleep for a while. Jim's afraid to try.

When it gets dark, they head out.


	4. Respite

"I'm tired," Tommy mumbles, stumbling after Jim in the dark and sniffling. "It's cold. I wanna go home."

 _I'm tired and cold too,_ he thinks, but all he says is, "We'll be there soon."

Tommy seems satisfied with that. He's practically catatonic with exhaustion, and hasn't asked about his parents in hours. Maybe he's just in shock.

Jim thinks _he_ might be in shock. Something's wrong with him. He probably should be feeling panicky, grief-stricken, or horrified. He's just witnessed a massacre. Women and children were shot down right in front of him. His foster parents-okay, he doesn't _love_ them, but they've been decent to him, fed him, asked about his day and smiled at him from time to time-he should be upset about the fact that they're gone ( _dead_ ), right? But he's not. He doesn't feel much of anything, like the part of his brain that produces emotions has just shut down.

His senses, on the other hand, are hyper-aware. It's a clear night, and there's enough of a gleam from Tarsus' double moons for him to see, but it's not quiet. There's noise everywhere. Heavy cargo vehicles are moving incessantly along the streets, lighting everything up. The new militia guards are patrolling on foot. Every time Jim hears an unexpected sound, he crouches down, hugging Tommy close, barely breathing until the noises and lights die away.

Normally Jim could walk home from the biolab in twenty minutes, but they've had to make a wide detour behind the livestock pens to avoid the streets, and then cut across the fields. They've been on the move for more than two hours.

 _Get back to the house. Keep moving._

 _Get back to the house._

It's all he can focus on. They need somewhere safe they can wash up, sleep, eat (not necessarily in that order), and make a plan. They need someone to take them in and hide them, maybe. There must be somebody in the colony who wants to help them.

Problem is, he doesn't know who he can trust.

* * *

And now they're kneeling in a field of half-grown wheat stalks, part of the Leighton family plot right behind their house. Eli stopped watering the wheat when the blight appeared, so the stems and leaves are wilted and crackly, scratching them as they hunker down, hidden among the rows. The distinctive, pungent odor of the fungus is heavy in the air. It makes him a little sick to his stomach.

They're almost there. One quick dash through the rest of the field and the garden, and they'll be home. But their house, which should be dark and empty, is lit up like they're having a party with all the neighbors. Light's streaming from all the windows, and there are people inside, moving around. He can't make out what they're doing. (Are they looking for something? Looking for _them?_ )

He stares dumbfounded at the house, _his_ house, where there are strangers inside, and a couple of militia guards standing just outside the back door, talking. He can't pretend anymore that everything will be alright if he can just make it home. (Because a small part of him has been hoping, desperately, that he's wrong, that he misunderstood, that he didn't see the pit or the bodies. He's been running it through his mind: Varda and Eli will be waiting for them at home, half out of their minds with worry, furious at Jim for running off with Tommy and staying out all night. They'll yell at him, that's for sure, and hug Tommy while he explains. But after that they'll give them both a big meal, and Tommy will stop crying and smile a little - )

But that isn't going to happen. The sight of other people in his home makes it all real, and now their situation is even more desperate. He and Tommy have nowhere to go. He doesn't have a plan beyond _get back to the house_ , so what are they supposed to do?

He has to make a decision; they can't stay here in the fields. But his one and only plan has just fizzled out, and he's so tired and hungry he can hardly think. This is all too much for him.

Tommy's sprawled on the ground next to him, fast asleep in the dirt, his head pillowed on his arms. Jim feels like slumping down next to him, letting himself get a few hours' rest. It's so tempting, just to shut out everything and forget. Maybe by morning, everybody will leave and they can sneak back in the house.

Or (even better) when they wake up, the colonists will have come to their senses and stopped Kodos' insane "revolution." Everything will go back to normal.

(Except half the colonists will be dead.)

He can feel his eyes glazing over, blurring his vision. He yawns, slaps his cheeks a little, tries to will himself more alert. He's got to stay awake and protect Tommy, at least until he can get them somewhere safe. Except he's not sure where _safe_ is anymore. Yesterday things were normal, and suddenly today Jim's on a list that says he's a threat to the "more valued members of the colony," and their neighbors are shooting at them with phaser rifles.

 _Jim, you keep an eye on Tommy,_ Varda told him this morning-it seems like so long ago-and he agreed, but he never imagined that by nightfall he'd be on the run, hiding from people with phasers with a five-year-old in tow. In the old action movies he loves so much, nobody ever has to run for his life dragging a preschooler around. What's he going to do when Tommy wants to eat? Or if they have to run somewhere, fast?

He's _thirteen_. He can't be in charge of a little kid.

He's not used to taking care of anybody but himself. When he was little, Sam was always in charge. Jim has a hundred memories of Sam taking care of him: getting him a snack, bandaging a scraped knee, yelling at him for being a brat, finding him when he got lost, getting him down from the tree in the back yard when he climbed too high. For years, Sam was Jim's protector - bigger and stronger and more daring - and that felt right and natural. Sure, maybe Sam resented him, but he was the steadiest, most reassuring presence in Jim's life. ( _Until he left._ )

And now Jim has no idea what to do, and he sure as hell can't protect anybody else.

He suddenly misses his older brother Sam with a vivid poignancy that brings tears to his eyes. Where _is_ Sam, right at this moment? Does he even think about Jim?

Sam's always been better than Jim at understanding what the adults in their world were up to. Sam would have seen this coming. Kodos must have been planning this for months. He's got followers, co-conspirators. There's an armed militia in their midst; they must have been training _somewhere_. Jim's never heard Eli or Varda speaking about the political situation on Tarsus, other than Varda's grumblings about their rations. Eli's been worried about the blight, and he knows there's a chance they'd have to evacuate.

But Jim's never gotten a hint of political unrest or tensions between groups of colonists. He's been oblivious, holed up in the biolab like an stupid puppy hoping Kodos would notice him, and in the meantime half the colony's been sentenced to death. Including him.

 _He'll never get away with it_ , he thinks tiredly, snuggling down a little closer around Tommy for warmth. The other colonists aren't stupid. Kodos can't just explain away the disappearance of four thousand people.

Maybe by morning, it'll all be over.

* * *

He startles out of sleep - _Oh, shit, that wasn't supposed to happen -_ to a hand roughly shaking his shoulder. "Get up!" someone is growling at him. "For God's sake, kid, what the hell are you doing out here?"

Mr. Voigt, Jim thinks with a sudden jolt of relief, their neighbor - and Eli's friend. Voigt's a big man, tall and broad, and he's pulling Jim to his feet before he's really awake and able to react. It's still dark, but the sky's beginning to lighten a little; Jim's been asleep for almost five hours.

"Daddy?" Tommy asks in a hopeful, sleepy voice, struggling to his feet.

"No, it's Mr. Voigt from next door," Jim whispers in his ear, and he can feel the slump of disappointment in the little boy's stance. He puts a steadying hand on Tommy's shoulder.

"You've got Tommy Leighton with you?" Voigt sounds appalled. "Have you kids been out in this field all night?"

Jim glances over at their house, dark and quiet in the early morning light. "There were people in the house. We couldn't go inside."

Voigt frowns, and Jim belatedly recalls that his son, Amos, was one of the guards on the plaza. The Voigts were on the second list.

Jim glances up at Voigt, suddenly wary.

"I wanna go inside," Tommy whines, tugging at Jim's hand. "I'm too _tired_."

"What are you two doing out here?" Voigt asks in a low voice, his eyes darting around as if checking that they're not being overheard. "Why didn't you go with Eli and Varda?"

"Go _with_ them?" Jim blurts before he can stop himself. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just exactly what it sounds like, kid. You two were supposed to go with them. Families stay together."

 _Careful,_ Jim tells himself. He doesn't know what Voigt has been told, or whether he's involved.After a pause, he says carefully, "We got separated. Do you know where they went?"

Voigt purses his lips, looking away uncomfortably. "You boys shouldn't be out here, it's not safe for you."

Jim catches the emphasis Voigt puts on the last two words - _for you -_ and there's something ominous there, but he's got to take a chance. He doesn't know very many people on the second list, and Voigt has spent many evenings at the Leighton house, chatting with Eli and relaxing with a drink long into the night.

"Mr. Voigt, please help us. We can't go home."

As if on cue, Tommy looks up at Voigt. "Please," he echoes in a small voice.

Voigt glances around again, then nods reluctantly. "Come back with me for now. We'll figure something out, I guess. I'll carry the boy."

 _We'll figure something out, I guess_ isn't very reassuring, and neither is _for now_ , but Voigt lifts Tommy up without another word and turns toward his house. Jim follows, feeling some of the weight of the day slipping off his shoulders.

* * *

Voigt's wife Ruth doesn't look thrilled when her husband shows up in with two hungry, exhausted children in her kitchen, but she serves them each a hot bowl of stew and a slice of fresh bread. The stew's thick with protein nibs and reconstituted vegetables; Kodos must have been serious about opening up the food stores. It's the best meal Jim's had in weeks.

While they're eating, the Voigts have a long, whispered conversation in the doorway - stepping as far away from them as they can while still keeping an eye on them. Jim eats quietly, straining to listen. He can hear words and phrases, here and there, mostly because Ruth keeps raising her voice to get her point across.

Voigt's saying something about Eli and then Jim hears him say "Kodos" more than once, but Ruth interrupts him, shaking her head. "Runaways," she says, glancing at them furtively. "They can't stay here."

"Keep your voice down," Voigt admonishes. "That little one's a sweet boy."

Jim glances at Tommy. To his relief, the boy seems totally focused on his food, carefully spooning up mouthfuls of stew, unconcerned with the adults' conversation.

Now they're talking about Amos... Do they have any idea what their son's been up to lately, when he was training with a phaser rifle and getting his orders about shooting down women and children? (Probably not. Amos is a quiet guy, never says much.)

Ruth raises her voice again. "You don't owe that kid _any_ thing, Ty. He's not Eli's son. He's just a foster kid…" Jim scowls to himself, wondering what Varda's been telling Ruth about him.

"Amos will be home in an hour," he hears Voigt say. "I'll handle it."

* * *

Jim stalls, putting off the inevitable. He asks for another bowl of stew. Outside the colony is quiet, covered in a blue morning light. Tommy's curled up on a blanket in the corner, fast asleep again.

Voigt and his wife sit down with him at the table as he's eating. "Well, we've talked it over," Voigt tells Jim. His voice is kind, almost gentle. "We think the best thing for the two of you is to get you to your family as quick as possible."

Jim stiffens, nearly choking on a mouthful of stew. "What do you mean, get to our family?"

"In the new settlement." Jim looks up at him blankly, and he explains, "The colony's been divided into two separate settlements. We had an assembly today explaining the situation. Kodos is the new Governor."

Jim gives a derisive snort. "Yeah, I got that."

Voigt frowns at him. "Better listen closely, son. Turns out Governor Hammond and his cabinet have been planning to break away from the colony and found a new settlement, about a hundred kilometers from here near the north ridge. They've been working on it for months, already got an outpost there. They've been preparing the land for farming, putting up temporary housing - "

" _What_? Are you serious?" If there was anything he was expecting to hear, it wasn't this whopping lie. Another settlement on Tarsus? It was crazy.

"They think that the crops will be safe from the fungus, if they get far enough away. But those bastards were planning on taking most of the food stores with them and leaving the rest of us behind," he says bitterly. "Half the goddam colonists were in on the scheme."

"That's not true," Jim protests. "There's no other settlement, this is all a big cover-up! Kodos - "

"Kodos showed us the proof," Voigt says, while Jim just looks at him, flabbergasted. "Document after document. I didn't want to believe it, but it's true."

"They were going to make off with the food, the livestock feed, and the uncontaminated seeds," Ruth puts in angrily. "Leave the rest of us behind to starve."

Jim shakes his head. "That's not what happened. You have to listen to me. I was at the plaza, I heard Kodos! He said there's not enough food for everyone and he signed an order to execute everybody on the first list!"

"You're a liar, and that's an evil thing to say!" Ruth tells him. "I won't listen to this. You weren't even there, you ran away, so how can you know what really happened? Kodos is the new Governor and he gave the order to divide the colony in two."

Voigt puts up a hand, forestalling Jim's protests. "It's true, kid. While you were hiding out, Kodos just loaded everybody on Hammond's list onto transports and sent them to the other settlement. It's what they wanted, anyway. Just without taking away all our supplies."

"That's not what happened!" With a cover story like this, he realizes with a sinking feeling, nobody will look for the other colonists, at least not for a long time. They'll all believe that they're better off without them. It explains why they need a militia. "Has anybody gone out there to check? How do you know they're alright?"

"He let them have half the food stores," Ruth counters. "It's perfectly fair. Better than what they deserve."

"There was a huge pit - We heard the phaser fire, and people were running, trying to escape - "

"Calm down," Voigt tells him sternly. "It's better this way. And the best part is, Dr. Kodos and his team have found a solution to the fungus."

"Kodos _engineered_ the fungus!" Jim yells, aghast. "He's the one who brought it to Tarsus in the first place!"

"That's enough," Ruth snarls. "Ty, save your breath. Just take the kids over to the plaza and see that they get on a transport this time."

"No!" Jim says desperately. "Aren't you listening? Kodos had the other colonists _killed_. I saw it with my own eyes!"

"That's not true and you know it!"

Voigt gives his wife a placating look, then turns back to JIm. "Eli and Varda must be sick with worry over Tommy. He belongs with his parents, and they're fostering you. They'll take care of you both."

"They're dead," Jim says bitterly. This is worse than he could have imagined. Four thousand colonists have been massacred, and no one is even going to look for them.

"Come on," Voigt says with a decisive tone. "You're finished eating now and it's getting late. I'll take you to the Governor and we'll get you on a transport. No sense in delaying it."

Voigt means well, Jim can tell. He thinks he's doing the right thing. But if Jim doesn't do something quick, they're going to share the same fate as everyone else on the list.

If Sam were here, what would he do? The answer pops up almost immediately: _run away_. And leave the boy ( _leave Jim_ ) behind.

* * *

Jim's thinking furiously as he gets Tommy on his feet and moving. Ruth makes them some sandwiches "for the journey," as she puts it, and wishes them good luck in their new home.

"Can we stop by our house, first?" Jim asks, as casually as he can, as they step outside. "I'd like to pick up a few things."

"If you're quick. I've got work to do."

It's just a short walk to the Leighton house. Jim puts his hand against the lock, but the door stays closed. "Sorry, kid. Guess they changed the locks." Voigt sounds genuinely sympathetic.

"But I need some things…" Jim trails off. He'd been thinking he could put together a survival kit, grab them a change of clothes and whatever food Varda had in the pantry. Then they might have a chance. _We're fucked_ , he thinks. He's out of ideas.

"Let's get going," Voigt takes a few steps away toward the street.

"Wait!" Jim says. Tommy looks up at him, his eyes enormous and scared. _He thinks I'm going to leave him here._ But Jim can't do that to Tommy. _Won't_ do it. (If Sam hadn't left, maybe he wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.)

He takes a deep breath. "Mr. Voigt, you _can't_ believe Eli was in on some kind of conspiracy. You're friends, you've been working side by side for years."

Voigt sighs, giving a little helpless shrug. "I don't _want_ to believe it, but… Governor Kodos is pretty persuasive. And I know that when people are hungry, they'll do just about anything to save themselves. Listen, kid - "

" _Jim_." It rankles him, the way Voigt seems to be deliberately refusing to use his name. Like Jim's not somebody he knows, who's worked with him and lived next door for months. "My name is Jim Kirk."

"Well, Jim, I don't know what you think you saw, but you don't need to worry. I'm sure Eli and Varda are waiting for you. They're probably setting up their new home even as we speak. And they'll need your help. There's a lot of work starting up a new settlement. Kodos made sure they got plenty of rations, equipment, and seedlings, but you'll all have your hands full for the next few weeks."

Jim rallies himself to try one last time. "Mr. Voigt, _please_ , just ask Amos what happened at the plaza. He was there, I saw him right near me. Some of the women tried to run away and Kodos gave the order to the militia to open fire. The guards killed women and children that were trying to run away!"

Voigt shoots him a cold look. "Are you calling my boy a murderer? Because there's no way Amos would kill anybody, unless it was self-defense."

Jim rubs his hand over his face. There's nothing else he can say. But Tommy's clutching his hand and looking up at him, and something in Jim hardens.

"All right," he says. "Believe what you want. It doesn't matter. But we're not going with you."

"You can't stay here by yourselves!" Voigt scoffs. "How old are you, fourteen?"

Jim looks him in the eye and holds himself straight. "Thirteen." At Voigt's condescending smile, he adds, "I can take care of myself."

"Maybe, but you can't take care of a five-year-old, too."

"Yes, I can." He's not sure where his certainty is coming from. "You can't force us to go with you. If they put us on a transport, we'll jump off. We'll run. I'm serious. I'm not going anywhere with you, and I won't let you take Tommy, either."

Voigt stares down at him - he's really pretty big, and Jim's not actually sure that Voigt couldn't drag them both down to the plaza if he really wanted to - but Jim holds his ground.

"Where will you go?" Voigt says, finally. "You don't have any food. Think about what you're saying! You're going to put that little boy through hell."

Jim pulls Tommy a little closer. "I'm responsible for him. We'll manage."

Voigt looks at him through narrowed eyes, as if he's sizing him up, then sighs. "I know I'm going to regret this. But… wait here for a bit. Stay out of sight if anybody comes by. I'll be back."

* * *

Voigt's back ten minutes later, holding a large backpack and a smaller bundle. "I put together some things for you. I won't force you to come with me, and I can't let you go without something to see you through the next few days, at least." He gestures at the backpack. "You've got some blankets, a first aid kit, and some of Amos' old sweaters in that one. It gets cold at night." He holds the small pack in Tommy's direction. "You can carry the food. Ruth made you some sandwiches."

Jim shoulders into the backpack. It's heavier than he'd expected. "Thank you, sir."

"If you change your mind, Jim, you know where to find me." He pauses. "You might want to try to caves behind the fields. You could probably shelter there for a while."

"Good idea," he agrees, although he's got a better hiding place in mind. But he doesn't know for sure whether or not he can trust Voigt not to turn them in, and if he thinks Jim's hiding in the caves, that's the first place anybody will look.

"Please don't tell anybody you saw us, Mr. Voigt."

They'll have to move fast. It's getting light.


	5. Licensed to Kill

**A/N:** This chapter includes a triggery scene near the end.

* * *

"We're gonna be secret agents," Jim explains. "Like spies. No one can know we're here."

 _Here_ is the storage loft above the cow stalls. The idea of hiding in the barn came to him in those last, desperate minutes before Voigt came back. _Stay out of sight if anybody comes by,_ Voigt told him, and it was enough to nudge his brain back into functioning.

Jim worked in the barn for months; it's the perfect hiding place. He knows what time the cows are fed and milked, when the stalls are cleaned, and where the fodder is stored. It's noisy and smelly enough to provide a good cover for two children who need to move around a bit (and need to pee and poop occasionally during the day).

It doesn't take long to set themselves up in the loft, making a little nest of blankets in the corner behind the storage bins. Jim keeps Tommy as busy as he can with little jobs ( _put the water bottle over here, count how many sandwiches we have and put them in two piles_ ) but there's a limit to how creative he can get with a bunch of old clothes and some food.

Jim quickly realizes that finding a hiding place is only the beginning. The main problem is going to be keeping Tommy entertained.

Up until now, most of his interactions with Tommy have involved kicking around a ball, getting him dinner, or setting up a vid or a game for him on his PADD. He never knew how short Tommy's attention span is and how hard it is for him to sit _still._ Even when Jim manages to distract him for a while with a whispered story or silly game, it never lasts long.

Jim's not sure how much of Tommy's behavior is normal for kids his age - he really has no one to compare Tommy to except himself, but he knows most kids don't teach themselves to read at four like he did - and how much is some sort of post-traumatic reaction. Sometimes Tommy goes all quiet and apathetic, or lies down with his back to Jim and cries, or asks the kind of questions that Jim can't answer, like _Where did mama and daddy go_ and _How long do we have to stay here_? Jim has no idea what to do with a traumatized child.

But the secret agent game distracts Tommy, so Jim really hypes it up. (Truth be told, he's always sort of imagined that he'd make a good spy.) "Secret agents have to be really quiet when they're on a stakeout, pay attention and remember everything. They're heroes. They have to learn all about their enemies and do dangerous things."

"Like what?"

"Like, uh…" Most of what he knows about secret agents is from old movies and books he read about Section 31, which were supposedly based on real cases. "Like sneaking into enemy territory and hiding."

"I don't like doing dangerous things." Tommy looks like he's going to start crying again. "When can we go home?"

"The dangerous things are only for the senior secret agents like me," Jim amends hastily. "You're just going to be a junior agent. That means you have to do what I say and report back to me."

Together, they dig a secret spy tunnel (really a crawl space behind one of the storage bins to the edge of the loft, overlooking the cow stalls), and Jim gives Tommy special assignments: find out which cow moos the loudest and which is the bossiest, learn the names of all the dairy workers, and tell him when they've all left for the night.

* * *

Three nights later, Jim goes on his first supply run. He waits until Tommy's asleep.

He's hesitant and nervous, and it takes him way too long to make his way from the cowshed to the residential area. The houses are all dark and quiet, and nobody's in the streets. He eventually finds a house with an unlocked back window, shimmies inside, and stashes everything that looks edible or potentially useful into his backpack. But a creaking mattress in the bedroom sends his heart rate soaring, and he's so skittish that he decides to make a quick retreat before his backpack's even half-full. He doesn't want to tempt his luck by trying another house, so he sneaks back to the barn, nearly jumping out of his skin at every unexpected noise.

By the time he climbs back up to their loft, he's so exhausted and tense, he can't fall asleep. (Being a secret agent might not be the right career choice for him after all.) But in the morning, when he shows Tommy what he's "found," Jim's ridiculously proud of himself. Tommy's happy with the change of clothes - they're a little big, but at least they're _clean -_ and they have half a loaf of bread and even some cheese.

He kind of wishes Sam could see him now - breaking and entering, stealing, hiding from the bad guys. Maybe then he wouldn't be so dismissive of his too-good, studious little brother. Jim's a badass _thief._

The next time Jim's more experienced and quicker, and the loot's better: soap, a flashlight, a knife, a few meals' worth of soup and rice (if they stretch it), and best of all: a notepad. It's not as good as a PADD - it's not even connected to the Tarsus network - but a notepad isn't password-protected, so anyone can use it. This one comes with a few simple games, so Tommy will have something to do. ( _Hallelujah_.)

And when Tommy's asleep or on watch duty in the spy tunnel, Jim has a project of his own.

 _Date: Stardate 2246.273_

 _To: Elton Hammond, Governor, Tarsus IV and all governing cabinet members_

 _From: Dr. Javier Mendez_

 _Subject: Conclusive proof of bioengineering in Podosphaera Xenobii_

Jim transcribes the document from memory, as closely as he can. He reads it over obsessively, trying to dredge up each sentence from memory as accurately as possible.

He knows he's got to get this memo out. He's just not sure what _out_ means. To the colonists, like Ty and Ruth Voigt? He's not naive enough anymore to hope they'd believe the memo, much less rise up against Kodos, even if he sent it to every PADD on Tarsus.

For now it's just a file on a notepad in a barn, going nowhere.

* * *

Six weeks of hiding take their toll. They're both getting thinner, weaker. They spend most days lying around listlessly; their muscles are atrophying. (He remembers hoping that living on Tarsus, with its higher gravity, would make him stronger. What an _idiot_.)

There's no end in sight. That's the worst part. Jim keeps telling Tommy that they're going to be rescued soon, but it's hard to keep lying to him. The fact is, life on Tarsus is going on as usual. They can hear the dairy workers chatting about the mundane details of their lives - birthday celebrations and arguments, household repairs and backaches - and it makes Jim furious. There's a boy about Jim's age who arrives every day after school, just like Jim used to, to clean the stalls and help out. So he knows kids are still going to school like always.

But there's nothing he can do except keep going. Every few nights he takes the backpack and finds another house to raid, getting bolder and more daring as he tries to find treats that'll make Tommy smile (maybe). Once he comes back with nothing in the backpack but a bag of cookies and a big pillow. Tommy hugs the pillow to himself all day, dragging it into the spy tunnel, taking it down to the water trough when they wash up that night, and finally falling asleep lying half on top of it.

Jim's glad to see the little boy so engaged, but he's not happy with his food take. Cookies won't last them for very long. He'll have to go out again, sooner than he'd planned.

He sighs. "C'mon, Tommy, let's play school again."

Tommy scoots over obediently, but his eyes seem dim. Jim opens their reading file on the notepad and they go over the letters and sounds again. Tommy knows most of them, or he should, but his responses are slower than usual.

Jim taps out _R E D_. "Concentrate. What's this word?"

"I don't know. I'm tired, Jim. I wanna lay down." Jim shrugs, and Tommy curls up over his pillow, closing his eyes.

A few hours later, he's burning up with fever.

Jim gives him fever reducers from their first-aid kid. He slices each pill in half, and Tommy has to chew them because he doesn't know how to swallow pills. From the face he's making, they must taste terrible, but he's too apathetic to put up a fuss. He drinks water when Jim tells him to and whimpers for his mother. Jim rubs him down with a wet cloth when his fever goes up and massages his arms and legs when he whines that they hurt.

Then Tommy starts coughing. It's a wet, mucosy cough, and his breath makes a little whistling sound that gets worse when he sleeps. Jim props his head and shoulders up on his lap, wraps his arms around Tommy's thin torso, and worries.

Jim's grateful for the cows, who're constantly shuffling around, lowing and mooing. But every so often they're all quiet together, and sometimes that's exactly when Tommy coughs.

If they get discovered, that'll be the end for both of them. Jim keeps his eyes on the ladder that leads up to the loft, imagining scenario after scenario. The only way in or out of the loft is by ladder, and usually, when one of the workers comes up, Jim and Tommy shift back into the tunnel and stay quiet. But with Tommy as helpless and vulnerable as he is, Jim can't protect him.

What if he coughs and somebody hears? Maybe he could just clap his hand over Tommy's mouth and try to keep him quiet… but that might end in him accidentally suffocating.

He imagines what he'll do if the boy, Ned Robb, comes up for fodder and hears them (Jim will launch himself at him, punch him, and take him down). But what'll he do if Ned manages to yell for help? What if it's not a boy his age, but one of the adult workers? They're big, strong guys who're used to physical labor, and Jim's not going to stand a chance against them. Maybe he could just make a run for it, push past them and leap down into the cow stalls, then try to escape.

To his shame, more and more of his imaginary scenarios end with him leaving Tommy behind. (And coming back for him later, of course. If he can.)

He remembers how Mr. Voigt looked at him disapprovingly: _You can't take care of a five-year-old. You're going to put that little boy through hell_. Up until now Jim's been proud of the way he's managing. He's found a place for them to hide, he gets them food and water and makes Tommy wash up every few days, he's even teaching the boy to read so he won't be behind his classmates when they get rescued. ( _If_ they get rescued.) But now, he's beginning to wonder whether he wasn't setting them _both_ up for disaster when he dragged Tommy with him in the plaza.

It's never really occurred to him that Tommy might endanger _him_.

Jim tries to keep himself focused. He chose to take care of Tommy no matter what, and he'll just have to deal with it. But it's as if that first, traitorous thought of _maybe I should have left him behind_ has opened a door in his mind, just a wedge, and now there's a flood of frustration and resentment that can't be held back.

 _If I were alone, I could take more chances_ , he thinks. He always waits until Tommy's asleep before he leaves because Tommy's so scared Jim's going to leave him. And he always makes sure to come back before dawn. But if he could stay out longer, for a few days at a time, he could check out the caves out beyond the fields. Who knows, maybe there are other people hiding there. They can't be the only ones who escaped the massacre… If he could go out during the day, get a little closer to people, maybe he could find out something about what's happening in the settlement. For all he knows, there's an underground rebellion against Kodos, but he's never going to find out about it by hiding in the barn all day.

And he's never going to get that memo off his notepad and out to someone who could really help, unless he somehow manages to sneak into the Governor's office. There's a Starfleet net interface in the main communications hub; Jim knows, because he went there when he received his mother's message. ( _I want to know how they're treating you. Tell me if you want to come home._ ) He really regrets his angry reply.

He imagines what message he'd sent his mom today, if he could. _Mom, come_ now, _come as fast as you can and tell the Captain to set phaser banks on full and blast this godforsaken colony out of existence - Just not the cowshed, Mom, because that's where I'm hiding with my sick foster brother._

God, he's so fucking tired of trying to keep Tommy entertained, telling him crazy stories of secret agents and inventing special jobs to keep him occupied. _Count how many moos Bessie makes when they come to milk her. I think it's a code._ He should be using his energy to think his way out of this mess. He could find a way to break into the biolab and sabotage whatever research they're doing, or steal a phaser rifle from one of the guards so at least they'd have some protection.

He knows he's not thinking straight, because he's so hungry (and he always makes sure Tommy has more than enough to eat, but Jim's almost _fourteen_ , damn it, and his body is constantly growling with hunger, a huge appetite that's never sated).

Tommy coughs again and again, and Jim just gets angrier and angrier.

* * *

Jim goes out that night because they're out of food again, and he's hoping to find some antibiotics for Tommy. He's not particular about what kind, and he doesn't know anything about dosages. But Tommy clearly needs something more than what he's been getting.

But this time, spurred on by his runaway thoughts, he leaves a little earlier than usual - Tommy's asleep anyway - and instead of heading straight for the residential area, he cuts back through the fields, away from the settlement. He's got to check out the caves. It'll take him an hour or so out of his way, but he can't stop thinking that maybe there are other people out there, possibly even other kids. It's becoming clear to him that he and Tommy can't hide out in the barn forever, passively waiting to be rescued; they need to find help.

He can see that a new wheat crop has been planted in some of the plots, the same quick-growing duotriticale that Eli was trying to grow (but this time he can't smell the acrid odor of the fungus). It's barely knee-high so he skirts around the new plantings until he reaches a plot of fully-grown corn, tall enough to hide him when he stands straight.

He hurries through the rows as fast as he can in the dim glow of the moons. He's nearing the limestone ridge that marks the edge of the Tarsus settlement. There are caves all along the outcropping, some of them large enough to hide a whole family or more. ( _Please please please._ )

When the cornfield ends, Jim peeks out cautiously.

As if in answer to his pleas, he can see the flickering light of a fire at the bottom of the ridge, about two hundred meters away. He holds stock still-there are _voices_. Somebody's there.

He takes a hesitant step forward. Time to take a chance.

He hasn't gone more than a few steps when hears a shuffling noise behind him, like somebody's pushing through the cornstalks. He glances back - _Oh shit -_ and starts to run.

Then a heavy body is crashing into him, and he's flying forward helplessly, his knees and hands scraping painfully on the ground. Jim tries to scramble up but the man is bigger and faster, pinning him with the weight of his body and placing a heavy hand on his chest to keep him still.

"It's a kid… What're just doing out here after curfew, kid?"

"Bring him over here," another man calls, and Jim is roughly hoisted to his feet. A hand clamps down around his arm, pulling him forward.

There are two other men waiting by the fire, one dark-haired and compact, one lanky and blond, Any hope that Jim still has that they're escapees from Kodos like himself are crushed when he sees the phaser rifles and the arm bands with the Tarsus insignia, double suns and double moons.

 _Militia._

The shorter of the two steps forward, looking Jim over with an air of authority. "What's your name?"

He tries to rein in his fear. _You're a secret undercover agent from Section 31_ , he admonishes himself sternly. _Man up._ _No one can know your real name and or anything about why you're really here._

"I'm Ned Robb. I work in the dairy barn." He hopes fervently that none of the guards know the Robb family.

"How old are you?"

"Thirteen."

"And what are you doing out here at this time of night?"

His mind's racing, trying to think of a plausible excuse. An image of Sam and Frank pops into his mind, and he puts a scowl on his face. "I, uh, had a fight with my dad. We don't get along. He's got a mean temper," he adds, in Sam's acerbic tone. "I just had to get out of the house."

The guard nods thoughtfully, even sympathetically, and Jim relaxes a fraction. "That's a bad situation, Ned. I know how it is. And you came out here because…?"

"I thought I could spend the night in one of the caves. I was going to go back in the morning."

"What've you got in your backpack?"

"Nothing. I just grabbed it on my way out the door. I thought I could sleep on it."

"Let me see."

Jim shrugs out of the shoulder straps and hands it over to the man, who opens it and shakes it out. Jim can hardly breathe, waiting to see if they're going to accept his story.

 _You're an undercover agent, infiltrating enemy territory_. _You stay calm even when you want to panic. You're smart and well-trained, and you're used to danger._

The two guards in front of him whisper together, their eyes never leaving him. It's creepy.

When they end their conversation and turn back to Jim, they're both smiling like they're in on a secret joke ( _bad, this is bad_ ). He feels the third one release his hold on Jim's arm in order to grasp both of his shoulders in a vise grip.

"Look, I'm really sorry," Jim says, putting as much genuine regret into his voice as he can muster. It's not hard, because he really, really regrets coming over here in the first place. "I know I shouldn't have run away. I wasn't thinking… I'll go back home."

The shorter guard, obviously in charge, takes a step closer. "You know the rules, Ned. Anyone breaking curfew has to be questioned by the Governor. No exceptions."

Jim feels a cold sweat break out over his back. "Please don't take me to the Governor - "

The other one, the gangly blond, crowds forward a little into Jim's personal space with a wicked glint in his eye. "What're you afraid of? The Governor won't do anything to you besides talk to you and your parents. If you're telling the truth, that is."

"I _am_ telling the truth."

"There's just one little problem," the first guard says calmly. "See, there've been a bunch of break-ins in the settlement ever since the others left. Somebody's stealing food, clothes, towels… Always little things."

"I know," Jim nods, not sure where this is leading. "My parents heard about it."

"But they probably don't know that the main suspect is a boy." Jim feels the bottom drop out of his stomach. "The thief's only taking kid-sized clothes, and the footprints they've found are from somebody about _your_ size. Isn't that a coincidence?"

Jim takes an unconscious step backward, or tries to, before he bumps up against the guard behind him. "Listen, you've got it wrong. _I'm_ not the thief."

"But you're out after curfew with an empty backpack, Ned. And I actually think the Governor's going to be really pleased with us for bringing you in for a chat."

Oh, no. Kodos will kill him, and Tommy… He doesn't want to think about what will happen to Tommy, abandoned in the loft, getting sicker and sicker.

"No! Please, let me go back home. I'll do anything you want, just let me go…"

"Kodos is offering a reward to anybody who catches the thief," the man holding him hisses into his ear. "A month's pay."

"I'll pay you," he says desperately. "My dad has money. I'll get it."

The head guard shakes his head. "I don't think so. You're a liar, and I think you're lying about that, too, Ned. Is that really your name? I doubt it."

" _Please_ ," he hears himself saying. "I'll do anything."

* * *

Turns out the three of them have an alternate proposal, and Jim agrees.

 _You're a spy and you have a mission. Even if they torture you, you don't break._

He doesn't struggle when they strip him and push him down on the ground. One of them shoves a piece of cloth into his mouth - it's only later, when they've gone, that he realizes that he's been choking on his own dirty underwear. He pushes him face down in the dirt, then jerks him onto his knees, ass up.

He knows what's going to happen, he's not naive, but he's completely unprepared for how much it hurts when the first one-he doesn't even know which one-pushes in. He can't help crying out at the searing pain, which only gets worse when the guy thrusts in and out like a battering ram.

He knows he agreed not to fight them, but he can't help himself. His fists scrabble at the dirt, as he tries desperately to break away from the hands holding him down and the weight of the guard on top of him. He needs him to stop moving or at least slow down until he can catch his breath and get used to the sensation, try to relax his muscles and then maybe it won't hurt so much. But the unaccustomed sensation is overwhelming and it burns like fire, and he's never felt so scared or helpless in his life.

It goes on for a long time.

* * *

It's almost light when he finally slips back into the barn and makes his painful way up the ladder. Tommy's waiting for him, wide-eyed in the dark.

"I was waiting for you."

"I'm sorry."

Tommy's eyes well up. "I thought you left because you didn't want to take care of me anymore."

"No," Jim says, feeling a sharp pang of guilt. God, he deserves everything that's happened to him. "I would never just leave you. I thought you were sleeping."

"What'd you bring?" he asks. He coughs a little, slumping back on his pillow.

"I couldn't get anything this time."

"Where's the backpack?"

"I lost it."

Tommy sighs, closing his eyes in exhaustion. "That's okay. You can find another one."

Jim carefully lets himself down beside him. His ass stings like it's been rubbed raw, inside and out, and the seat of his pants is wet and sticky. He should probably wash himself off, change into clean clothes, but he can't bring himself to move.

Next time he goes out, he's bringing the knife.


	6. Intermezzo

**A/N:** The intermezzo, or _Zwischenzug_ ("in-between move"), is a chess tactic in which the player under attack makes a surprise move which poses an immediate threat to his opponent, interrupting the execution of the opponent's current plan.

* * *

Tommy recovers, slowly. His cough gradually becomes drier and his fever goes away. He sleeps a lot.

Jim's grateful for the quiet. After what happened with those guards, all he wants is to shut down, not to think about anything. He's not hurt - sore, maybe, but that goes away too - but just thinking back on the humiliation and helplessness he felt makes him flinch. He shoves the memory down as far away as he can, but miserable little flashes of it keep coming back when his mind's not occupied.

So while Tommy recuperates, Jim plays chess on the notepad, one game after the next. Speed chess, hexagonal chess, Fischer random chess, and 3-D chess; it's all good. Anything that can keep him from thinking too much.

Jim's always liked chess. He understands strategy, he can concentrate and think ahead. (Also he's competitive, and he loved being better than Sam at something when they were growing up.) A good chess player has to figure out a plan and try to think it through a few steps, in as many permutations as he can - if I do this, and my opponent counters with that, what should I do next? - until, hopefully, he manages to maneuver himself into a better position. It's exactly the kind of thinking Jim's good at.

After the tenth or eleventh game, it finally dawns on him that he should have been playing chess with Kodos all along.

Instead, he's been playing hide-and-seek. No wonder Kodos almost got him.

He's been going at this all wrong, never thinking much further ahead than what food he can steal and how to stay out of sight. His plan's been simple: stay alive until they get rescued. Keep Tommy safe. Hide and wait.

Sam would probably be disgusted with him, but not particularly surprised. Jim's favorite way of dealing with trouble has always been to lie low and hope that the storm will blow over. He always does the responsible thing, the _safe_ thing (well, except for that time with the Corvette), and everybody else forgets about him while they're off doing whatever the hell they want.

( _Please, I'll do anything._ )

The hell with that. Time to face reality. It's been _months_. Nothing's changed and nobody's coming - not his mother, not Starfleet, not the colonists on the Good List - and it's time he ditched the denial and stopped waiting passively.

Oh, he's been such an idiot. But no more.

He opens up a new file on the notepad and starts two lists: weaknesses and strengths. The first list is easy, because it's what he's been saying to himself for months.

 _Just a kid._

 _Hungry and getting weaker._

 _Guards have phaser rifles._

 _No clue what's going on, no access to the network._

 _Responsible for a sick child._

Each one is an overwhelming problem, and it makes him just that little bit more panicked to see the words staring back up at him. But maybe he can come up with a strategy to deal with them, one at a time.

Next to _just a kid_ , he writes _smart._

After a moment, he changes it to _really smart._ A small smile twitches at his lips. No sense in being overly modest. Granted, aside from his quick thinking at the plaza he hasn't really done anything brilliant yet, but there's time.

 _Can think things through,_ he adds. _Plan ahead, anticipate responses, build a strategy._ Well, obviously Kodos and his followers are great at all these things as well, but they're not anticipating any counter move from _him_.

Next to _hungry and getting weaker_ , he writes _desperate and angry_.

He takes the knife from its hiding place under his blanket and runs his fingers over the sharp edge. He could kill, he thinks, to survive. He'd protect Tommy with his life. (He's already bargained away something pretty important to save himself.) What does he have to lose at this point?

He skips the next item - _guards have phaser rifles_ \- because it's a pretty insurmountable problem, and moves on to _no clue what's going on_.

Maybe it's time to _get_ a clue.

 _Good powers of observation,_ he writes, already forming a plan. Sherlock Holmes never sat around waiting for the clues to come to him, or whined to Dr. Watson because he didn't have access to the local infonet. Boo hoo. "The world is full of obvious things which nobody ever observes," Sherlock tells Watson, and Jim's got the same tools Sherlock had - eyes and ears and a brain. The detective went out and investigated, which is what Jim should have been doing all along instead of listening to the cows moo. What the hell has he been waiting for?

Maybe he should be _thanking_ those damn guards for giving him the smackdown he needed. Fuck 'em. He's going to come up swinging.

 _Responsible for a sick child_ … Crap. Tommy's absolute dependence on him is like a chain around his ankle, preventing him from taking any major risks or trying to go any further than a quick in-and-out night foray. How long would Tommy survive without him? He's never even been out of the barn since they started hiding, never gone further than down the ladder to the water trough at night. And never without Jim right next to him.

Jim sighs. What he has to do is obvious: get Dr. Mendez' memo out to Starfleet. He's going to have to break into the Governor's office, use the communications hub, and then haul ass back to Tommy, all without being seen. It's a wild, impractical, and ridiculous idea, and he'll probably get himself killed in the process. But maybe that's better than hiding in a barn, hungry and filthy, waiting endlessly for a rescue that isn't coming.

He wonders how his father felt on the _Kelvin_ when the ship was set on its collision course. He was probably so hyped up on adrenaline and desperation that he never had time to be afraid. And Jim knows, from the few things his mother's told him, that she was on the comm with him the whole time. It's easy to be a hero, Jim thinks, if you only have to hold your conviction for a minute or so, and your wife's right there with you, telling you about your new baby and how much she loves you.

No one's going to be around to witness Jim's heroic moment or talk him through it, if he even gets that far. If he fails, nobody's ever going to know what happened to him.

Tommy coughs, moving restlessly in his sleep. Jim sets down the notepad and goes over to him, pulling Tommy's head into his lap and stroking his hair.

* * *

As the plan takes shape in his mind, Jim begins to feel irrationally hopeful. He knows it's crazy. There are any number of possible glitches in the plan, mostly involving Kodos' militia. The chances of success are so ridiculously low, the consequences of his getting captured are so dire, that Jim can hardly believe he's going ahead with it. It's suicide.

But just having something proactive to do boosts his spirits. For four nights in a row, he slips out of the barn at night, raids one of the outlying houses for a loaf of bread or some leftovers, then makes his way over to the Governor's office. It's in a large, nondescript building adjacent to the school. Inside there's the Governor's main office suite, a collection of smaller workstations, and the main communications hub. Two armed guards, he discovers, patrols outside every night (and probably all day, too, but Jim's never dared to go out in the daylight), in shifts of four hours.

Jim watches them from behind a clump of bushes not far away. The guards take turns, from what he can see; one guards the entrance, and the other makes a sweep around the perimeter. Occasionally one of them goes inside the building. Jim can see that the door locks with the same kind of biometric sensor the biolab used, which means he has no chance of getting in unless one of the guards agrees to open it for him. (Maybe he can ask to use the bathroom. Or tell them he left something important in the comm hub, or that he can't sleep until he sends off a birthday message to his grandmother...)

It's basically hopeless, but at least now he knows what he's up against. Time for stage two.

* * *

"Hey Tommy, wanna come with me tonight when I go out?"

"No."

"It's fun," Jim tries. "We can sneak around behind the houses like real secret agents."

"I don't wanna go."

"I'll show you how I find food."

Tommy's mouth sets in a determined pout. "I don't like the dark."

"You need the exercise. It's good for kids to run around a little."

"I'm tired." As if to prove his point, Tommy flops onto his stomach, draws his blanket up to his neck, and closes his eyes. He pointedly ignores Jim's attempts to cajole, encourage, and insist that he go with.

Jim understands why Tommy's reluctant to leave the sanctuary of the cowshed, but the boy's got to learn how to sneak out on his own. One night Jim might not come back - probably won't, once he tries to crash the comm hub - and Tommy has to know what to do. But Jim can't even hint at the real reason without making Tommy dig his heels in even harder.

Tommy's surprisingly stubborn. He doesn't budge for _You have to do what I say because I'm in charge_ , and just shrugs at Jim's attempts to bribe him with stories and games. In the end, Jim can only get him out in stages. Taking a step outside the cowshed and then scampering back up the ladder, his chest heaving in terror, is as far as Tommy's willing to go on the first night. It takes over a week of frustrating efforts to get Tommy as far as the fields behind their old house. Tommy holds tightly to Jim's hand the entire time and lets out an occasional whimper.

"Quiet," Jim hisses at him. "Look over there, see that light? That's the Voigts' house, next to ours." He doesn't add that Eli and Varda's house, _their_ house, is now occupied by a newlywed couple from the Good List.

"Can we go back now?"

"Tommy, listen to me, okay? Just one thing, and then we'll go back." Jim kneels down, putting himself at Tommy's eye level. "Remember Mrs. Voigt? She was nice, right? She was friends with your mom."

Tommy nods uncertainly. Jim's not sure what he remembers of Mrs. Voigt, but casting her in the role of Varda's friend is definitely stretching the truth. But it doesn't matter; Ruth Voigt is now part of his plan. "And Mr. Voigt was friends with Eli. He likes you, Tommy. If I'm not around - "

"You're not going away!"

"I'm not going anywhere," Jim soothes. "Keep your voice down. I'm just saying, if for some reason it takes me a long time to come back one night, like more than a few days - "

"No!" Tommy's eyes are starting to fill with tears.

"If it's an _emergency_ , and you're out of food, then you can go to the Voigts' house and they'll take care of you." It's the best plan Jim's been able to come up with. He recalls Mr. Voigt calling Tommy a sweet little boy. He brought them food and supplies; he's basically a good man. If Tommy showed up at his back door, he'd take him in, wouldn't he?

(Deep down he knows that it's probably a terrible idea. The Voigts' son Amos is in the militia and they won't take the chance of hiding a little boy in their home. But maybe Mr. Voigt will be sympathetic, or maybe he knows a good hiding place for Tommy somewhere. At any rate, it's better than leaving Tommy alone in the barn, waiting for Jim to come home when it's not going to happen. Isn't it?)

"You can't go away, Jim! You promised to take care of me!"

"I will! I promise, I'll always come back to you, Tommy, if I can. But just in case, I want you to know where to go."

Tommy shakes his head again in denial, and Jim gives up. They can talk more about it later. He's fairly sure that Tommy could find his way to the Voigts if he had to, and for now that's good enough.

In the morning Tommy refuses to talk to him, and holds his hands over his ears when Jim lies, over and over, saying he's not going to leave Tommy behind. (He hates himself a little more every time he says it.)

* * *

The next night, Jim slips takes the knife into the waistband of his pants, tucks the notepad down his shirt, and tells Tommy he's going out for some food. He doesn't make a big deal out of saying goodbye and Tommy, who's still mad at him, just shrugs and turns away.

He figures it's better that way. If Jim doesn't come back, Tommy can just stay angry at him, and maybe that'll make it easier for him. Or if Jim is really (unbelievably) lucky, he'll come back, and then he can make it up to Tommy by being extra nice for a few days.

He's become adept at slipping through the shadows, but he's particularly careful this time, his senses sharp and attuned to every unexpected sound. He's nervous, but he makes it to his usual hiding place behind the bushes without a hitch. The corners of the notepad press uncomfortably into his chest, but it's reassuring to know that the memo's right there, ready for a quick infotransfer.

Little by little, over the course of an hour, he creeps closer. He waits until the guards-a man and a woman-are distracted or patrolling the farther recesses of the compound before risking a move, taking refuge behind a clump of weeds, a bush, and eventually a boulder that's not more than a quick dash from the entrance.

He feels disconnected from himself, as if he's caught in a dream. He's imagined this moment so many times in the last few days that he can hardly believe it's actually happening. He wraps his hand around the knife and tries to slow his breathing down, to keep focused, to stay sharp.

When the female guard leaves to take a turn around the perimeter, leaving the male guard alone in front of the entrance it's showtime.

He tosses a stone a few meters from the guard. When the man turns to investigate, Jim runs forward with the knife in his right fist, and shoves the blade in up to the hilt just under his shoulder blade.

It's not enough to incapacitate him. The man jolts forward with a harsh grunt, landing on his knees and twisting around to defend himself. But his grip on the phaser rifle is loosened, and that's what Jim's been hoping for.

Jim snatches up the weapon and steps back, out of the guard's reach. "Stay down!" he hisses.

"Goddam it! What the hell are you doing, kid?" The man reaches around with his left hand toward the knife, still embedded in his back. When his hand comes back sticky and wet, he seems stunned. "What the - Did you just stab me in the _back_ , you little shit?"

"Shut up," Jim tells him. He means for the words to come out calm and cold, but his voice is shaky and he cringes internally. "Step over to the door," he adds, grateful that the words sound more like an order than a request. This is the weak link in his plan; he has to get the guard to cooperate in order to activate the biometric lock. But the man doesn't look cooperative, he looks furious.

"Fuck no! Shara," he yells, raising his voice, "get back here quick! Code blue!"

Damn it. Jim's grip on the rifle tightens, and he gestures with it in a way that he hopes is believably threatening. "Open the door! And keep quiet!"

"Put the rifle down, kid, _now_. You're in enough trouble as it is."

"Hit the lock or I'll shoot."

"Shara!" The shout is loud enough to wake up half the colonists. "Code blue, armed intruder!"

"Shut _up_!"

"I need backup, I need - "

Jim presses the trigger. The rifle jolts in his hands with a tingling blast of energy and he nearly loses his grip. A glowing laser beam shoots out, straight into the guard's chest. The man drops to the ground and doesn't move.

Jim stares at him, unmoving. _Holy shit, is he dead?_ It never occurred to him to check whether the phaser was set to stun or kill.

The idea that he's just killed a man doesn't bother him nearly as much as it should. _If he's working for a mass murderer, then he deserves to die. And it's me or him. No choice._

"Hey!" The other guard - Shara - comes running around the side of the building. "You! Stand back or I'll - "

Jim shoots her, too. It's easier the second time.

Then he turns back to the first guard, lying crumpled on the ground. He grabs the man by the wrist - there's a slow pulse, so maybe Jim's not a cold-blooded killer after all - and drags him over to the entrance. With a little effort, he manages to lift the guard's hand high enough to touch the biosensor. The door slides open, and Jim slips inside.

* * *

Another quick shot from the rifle takes out the man on duty in the comm hub - Jim's hands are steadier now, and he doesn't flinch at the energy backlash - and he seats himself in front of the communications console. His hands are shaking, his heart is racing, and he's swimming in sweat, but he's elated. He's _in_. He's not sure how much time he has, but he's gotten this far. Now he just needs a few uninterrupted minutes.

He's done this once before, that one time when he sent a message off to his mother, so it's not too hard to work through the sequence again. His mother's Starfleet comm address is already in the hub system, so that's easy enough to access. The message will be relayed through subspace channels until she gets it; depending on where she is, that could take weeks… or months.

Jim sets the notepad down in front of him, retrieves the message he prepared - text, not video, so it'll transfer faster - and downloads it to the hub, his fingers clicking impatiently on the console. It details the fungal infection and the food crisis, Governor Kodos' so-called revolution, the massacre, and the two lists in as much detail as he can recall. Dr. Mendez' memo is attached at the end. The data transfers in less than two seconds.

He's about to send it off when he hesitates. What if they think it's a prank? What if they dismiss it as unfounded? Who's going to believe a fourteen-year-old with a delinquent charge on his record? What if his mother - because they'll question her, they'll have to ask her if she knows what's going on - tells them Jim's been angry, acting out and desperate for attention?

Vaguely, from somewhere outside, he can hear voices. Shouts. His stomach plummets. Oh God, he doesn't have much time.

"Record and attach message, text only," Jim says. "Mom, it's me, it's Jim. Really. Uh... it's all true. The colony's in real trouble. I'm not making any of it up. Kodos killed everybody on the bad list. I only managed to escape at the last minute. I've been hiding in - " He almost says _the cowshed_ , but stops himself at the last second. He can't give away Tommy's hiding place.

"I've been hiding, stealing food. Mom, send help, tell Starfleet to come quick. I have to go, they're coming for me…"

He can people running in the corridor. They're getting closer.

"I need your help, Mom," he whispers, his throat closing around the words. "I'm sorry about everything. Please. Tell Sam - " He takes a deep breath. "Tell Sam I miss him. If you know where he is." There, he thinks, that'll convince his mother that it really _is_ Jim.

"Send message," he manages to say, just as the door swishes open and a terrible blast of energy shocks his body into oblivion.


	7. Not with a bang

**A/N:** Really, really sorry for the ten-month cliffie. What can I say? The muse deserted me. I've come back to it now, but am planning to take it in a slightly different direction.

Chapter title comes from T.S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men":

 _This is the way the world ends_

 _Not with a bang but a whimper._

* * *

Jim comes back to consciousness gradually. His body wakes up faster than his brain, so at first he's mostly aware of physical sensations, but he doesn't attach much meaning to them. He can feel deep muscle aches in his arms and legs, tingling in his fingers.

Something's wrong, but he's not sure what. He's lying on his side, and his cheek is cold from where it's pressed against the hard floor. The room is so dark, pitch black, that he has to blink a few times to convince himself that his eyes are open. When he tries to move, his limbs are sluggish and heavy, and he can't raise his left leg very far.

It comes back to him then: taking down the two guards, the frantic recording to his mother, the noises of the guards closing in on him, the hiss of the opening door - but he'd gotten the message out, he's sure he saw the confirmation on the console just as the guards fired - and then the intense burning shock that shot through his back. Phaser fire. He must have lost consciousness. ( _Why isn't he dead?_ )

He reaches a shaky hand down to disentangle his foot from whatever's impeding it. He can feel that his shoes are gone, and there's something hard and smooth encircling his left ankle.

A cuff.

A bolt of panic sweeps up his spine, sending his heart racing and jolting him back into full awareness. He scrambles to his feet, feeling along the tight cuff with both hands - God, the room's so dark, it's like he's blind - following the cable to where it's bolted to the wall. It's not more than a meter long. He spends a minute pulling frantically at the leg shackle until he's breathless, but it's futile. He's chained to the wall.

 _oh God oh God_

His breaths are coming fast and shallow and he feels dizzy and disoriented. A terrible thought strikes him: maybe they're sucking the oxygen out of the room, trying to suffocate him? He sinks slowly down onto the floor, propping himself up against the wall, his knees bent in front of him. He opens his mouth and gulps in air until his heart rate slows, little by little, and he stops feeling like he's going to pass out.

This is bad, really bad. He wasn't supposed to get _captured_. His plan was so wild and reckless that he'd only ever really considered two possible outcomes: somehow miraculously getting into the comm hub without being seen - of course he knew it was never going to work, but he had to try something - or getting caught and killed. The idea of death by phaser rifle hadn't even scared him too much. It would be quick and clean and even heroic, just like his father's death. Over in seconds.

But this - getting caught and taken alive - wasn't part of the plan. The realization that he's helpless and trapped forces a little whimper out of him. Whatever happens next, Jim knows it's going to be terrible. Kodos is cruel and merciless, and Jim's just betrayed him in the worst way possible. Kodos will want to hurt him. He's sure of it.

His brain is flooding with frightening images of Kodos' cold eyes and - he can't help it - horrible implements of torture, knives and whips and pointed objects. He's just a boy, not a trained spy, and this isn't a game. He imagines himself pleading, begging, and then screaming-

 _Stop it_! he tells himself firmly. _Calm down and stop thinking._

He focuses on his breathing, trying to push out all thoughts out of his mind except his awareness of the physical sensations of his lungs filling and emptying. He counts to four as he breathes in, then another four as he breathes out. In. Out. In. Out.

There. It's working. In. Out. _One… two… three… four..._

But a brief image of Tommy waking up and finding him gone hijacks his thoughts. What time is it? He has no idea how much time has gone by. It could be morning. He can imagine Tommy calling out for him, then paralyzed with fear, huddled in a corner with his pillow, hoping Jim will be coming back like he promised…

Enough. He can't think about that. He shoves the thought away and goes back to breathing.

In. Out. In and out.

It takes a while, but the panic gradually recedes. Jim wipes the sweat off his forehead, rubs his hands over his face, and squints into the darkness. He can't see anything, even when he moves his hand back and forth in front of his face. He can't hear anything, either, except for his own breathing. When he holds his breath and listens, it's so eerily silent that he's half-convinced he's been left alone to rot here. Maybe nobody will ever find him.

A little moan escapes him. It's a pathetic, weak sound that's practically swallowed up by the overwhelming silence.

He wonders, suddenly, if he's being observed, if they can hear him. Are they out there, watching him hyperventilate and whimper? Is that what Kodos wants? Damn it, Kodos hasn't even touched him, and already he's breaking down and practically fainting.

Kodos. Evil fucking bully. Fucking _coward_ , chaining him to a wall and locking him in a room with the lights out. Jim never realized he could hate someone this much. And he hates the militia, and all the stupid colonists like the Voigts who cooperated or never asked the right questions, as long as they were safe.

Anger, he quickly discovers, feels a lot better than fear.

"Ok, that's it," he says out loud, as much to himself as to anyone who might be listening. "You made your fucking point! I get it. I know what you're trying to do. But it won't work." His voice echoes off the walls; it's oddly comforting.

"I guess you think you can scare me, putting me in a little room and turning off all the lights. Want me to break down and cry? Boo hoo. You know what? I'm not scared of the fucking _dark_." He puts as much derision into his tone as he can, but his voice is pretty shaky and he knows he's not convincing anyone, including himself.

"Oh, and by the way," he laughs, "your militia's pretty pathetic. I'm just a 13-year-old kid and I took out two guards. Didn't see _that_ coming, did you? They had phaser rifles and all I had was a knife. And just so you know, I sent off the transmission. There's nothing you can do to stop it. You guys are all dead meat."

There's no answer, but Jim plunges on. It's actually kind of fun, throwing out taunts and insults. Sure, it's bravado, but it's a hell of a lot better than cowering there like a baby. "My mom's _Starfleet_ , assholes, and I told her everything. All about the fungus, the list, the massacre. All the names, all the people you killed. Starfleet's gonna hunt you all down and put you in prison for the rest of your goddamn lives!"

It's still maddeningly quiet.

"Aw, what's the matter, did I screw up your revolution?" he says in a mock-sympathetic tone. "I guess you thought Tarsus is so isolated, you could do whatever you fucking wanted here and nobody would ever know. Well, you're not gonna get away with it!"

He raises his voice until the room is reverberating with the echoes. "There's gonna be an investigation and a trial and everybody in the Federation will know what you did! You'll all wind up in a prison colony for the rest of your lives!" he shouts at the top of his lungs. "And then when I'm dead I'm gonna stick around and haunt you until you're screaming and pissing in your pants! Because you're cowards! Leaving a kid in a locked room… assholes! Shitheads! Bastards!"

He pauses, breathing hard. He can't think of anything else to say. He's used up his store of curses and insults.

He's not sure, but he thinks he hears something… a low buzzing that wasn't there before.

Good. They're coming.

"Come in here and talk to me!" he yells. "Rafael Kodos, I know you can hear me! Remember me, Dr. Kodos? Jim Kirk, the stupid kid who used to get your coffee and clean the bathrooms at the lab? I bet you thought you were so smart, killing Dr. Mendez. But I memorized his memo. I'm smarter than you think, you piece of shit! I sent my mom the memo, and you won't get away with this, everyone's going to know that you ruined the food supply on purpose, you killed everybody on the first list, you're a liar and a murderer and a - "

There's a pneumatic hiss of a door sliding open, and the room is suddenly flooded with a bright light. Two men walk in: Kodos and one of his guards, a big burly man wearing the militia uniform and carrying a phaser pistol. Jim gets warily to his feet.

"Of course I remember you, Jim. The little lab rat who stuck his nose where it didn't belong." Kodos smiles coldly. "I'll admit, I'm surprised to see you. What a resourceful little creature you've turned out to be."

"You're a murderer," Jim says again.

"A scientist," Kodos says lightly, as if he's correctly a wrong answer in a classroom. "And you, my boy, are a nuisance." He sighs, shaking his head. "My own fault, really. I saw your intelligence, your curiosity, and thought you should be encouraged. I was naive. I thought that despite your background, your talents could be channeled."

"My background?" Despite the situation, Jim's a little insulted. "My dad's a Starfleet hero!"

Kodos nods, giving Jim an appraising look. "I know about the _Kelvin_ disaster, and what your father did was noble and self-sacrificing. And no doubt you've inherited his courage and determination." Then he shrugs. "But I realize now that your behavior is more indicative of your true character. You have a criminal record. Willful destruction of property, reckless endangerment. Signs of sociopathy."

" _What_? I'm not..." Jim knows what a sociopath is-a mean sonofabitch with no regard for the rights or feelings of others. That's not him. He feels a ridiculous need to defend himself: he's been taking care of Tommy and he cares about him. Would a sociopath do that? But he can't say that to Kodos. Kodos can't know about Tommy.

"You came to Tarsus to be rehabilitated, and I initially believed we could help you, but your actions at the lab proved otherwise. Your antisocial tendencies are ingrained. That's the reason you were supposed to be eliminated with the others."

"Eliminated," Jim spits out. "Killed, you mean."

Kodos is unmoved. "Not killed; _culled_. Rejected, if you will."

"But _why_?"

Kodos sighs. "I suppose this is hard for you to understand and accept. And you're taking it personally, Jim, which is never a good trait in a scientist. The fungus had destroyed the crops. Our uncontaminated supplies were limited."

Jim takes an angry step forward, although the ankle cuff prevents him from getting too close to the men. "But you engineered the fungus! Why destroy the food supply in the first place?"

"Because Tarsus has lost its focus! Tarsus has the potential to be a model colony… an alternative to the squalor and overcrowding of Earth! My boy, I helped write the Tarsus charter. Tarsus was designed to be a better society, a return to farming and basic values, without the overdependence on technology that has ruined modern society. We set up strict criteria to accept colonists into the community, conducted extensive interviews, did background checks. But the Federation wouldn't continue to fund the colony unless we changed the guidelines to minimal health and age requirements. Anyone who's young and healthy can join," he says with a derisive sneer. "What is the point of leaving Earth if the society is just the same as what you left behind?

Jim's a little taken aback by the force of his words. _He's a fanatic_ , he thinks. _He really believes what he's saying._

"The colony grew, but the quality of the people here was so diluted" - he pauses, looking meaningfully at Jim, as if to say, _by people like you -_ "that we couldn't have the kind of community we wanted."

"You're crazy," Jim whispers, horrified. It's all clear to him now. "You created a food crisis so you could kill off half the people."

"Very good." Kodos inclines his head. "You catch on quickly. So we could select those who would contribute to the community, not detract from it."

Jim feels sickened, remembering how he once craved this man's approval, wanted to impress him with his intelligence. He's not even a real person to Kodos, he realizes. He's a rat… a creature… a criminal. A _detraction_. "Because I'm a foster kid."

"Exactly."

"So… why are you telling me this?" His mind is whirling. Kodos has just confessed a horrendous crime to him; he can't be planning to let Jim live.

"Because you are going to help me, Jim."

Now he definitely knows Kodos is insane. "Never," he says flatly. "Why would I want to help you?"

Kodos takes a step forward until he's standing almost intimately close to Jim. Jim sneaks a glance at the guard; his hand's on his pistol and he's watching the two of them closely. Jim huffs out a tense, frustrated breath. He can't do anything to Kodos, and he knows it.

"Because I can give you a clean death, Jim. Or I can make things very, very unpleasant for you."

Jim gives an inward shudder. _Oh God, he's going to be tortured, for real_. "What… what do you want from me?" His throat catches on the last word, and he can feel heat flushing over his cheeks. Kodos must know he's terrified.

"We know now that you're the boy who's been breaking into the outlying houses. The thief. For those crimes, if for nothing else, you deserve to be severely punished." Jim swallows. He can't imagine what a severe punishment from Kodos would entail. "But we also know that you're hiding someone else. You stole clothes and toys for a much younger child."

 _Shit. Shit._

"No," he tries weakly. "It's not true. Just me, I've been hiding alone."

Kodos scoffs. "You're a very poor liar, Jim." He motions to the guard. "But I don't like being lied to, and before we go any further, let me make my intentions clear."

The guard steps forward and swings his heavy fist twice, hard, at Jim's midsection.

Caught off guard, Jim doubles over into a fetal position. The pain is overwhelming. For a moment he's paralyzed like that, crouched on his knees and unable to draw breath into his lungs. When he's finally able to pull in some oxygen, his lungs wheeze in a high-pitched whine, like they're struggling to inflate. Even worse than the pain is the wave of nausea which he can't stifle, making him retch and then throw up.

Kodos steps back away from the splatter and waits for Jim to stop spitting and gasping. Jim wraps his arms around his aching belly, trying to soothe the soreness, and glares back up at him. It's not like he's never been in a fight before, but he's never been so deliberately hurt by someone so much bigger than him. And for all that he'd like to think of himself as tough, the sudden shock of that blow has made him realize just how vulnerable he really is and how unprepared he is to deal with real pain.

Kodos, unperturbed, just tells him to stand up, then continues calmly, "Now that we know the thief is you, I'm sure the boy you're hiding is Tom Leighton. He's five years old, isn't he?"

Jim doesn't respond.

This time it's a hard blow to his nose, which knocks him back down to the floor. The hot, sharp pain makes his eyes water and he can feel the blood spurt out his nose. Kodos scowls in disgust when Jim drags his filthy sleeve over his lips and chin. It comes away covered in blood.

"Do you know where Tom Leighton is, Jim?"

Jim just nods. Kodos knows Tommy's hiding with him, so there's not much point in denying it. He's afraid of getting hit again, but there's no way he can give up Tommy. They'll kill him for sure.

"Tell me where he is, then."

"No," Jim says miserably. His nose is swelling and stuffed, and the word comes out a lot less defiant and a lot more nasal and pathetic than he'd hoped. He looks up at Kodos, scared and dreading what's coming.

Kodos lets his guard beat on Jim a few more times. A heavy slap to his jaw, a few kicks to his ribs as he's cringing on the floor. Jim hears one of his ribs crack and there's a flare of pain, but all in all, it doesn't hurt as bad as he'd expected. He keeps muttering "No" every time Kodos asks for Tommy's whereabouts.

He's not going to give in. Tommy's depending on him. He can't give him away.

The guard moves in again, but Kodos puts up a hand to stop him. "That's enough for now. It's the adrenaline; he's hardly feeling it. We'll wait a bit."

"Don' care if you… torture me... " Jim coughs out, spitting blood onto the floor. "Won' tell you."

"I don't torture children, especially not delinquent, inferior children like you," Kodos tells him. "I _ignore_ them."

The door whooshes shut behind the two men, leaving Jim crumpled on the floor alone in absolute darkness.


	8. Endgame

_After a bad opening, there is hope for the middle game. After a bad middle game, there is hope for the endgame. But once you are in the endgame, the moment of truth has arrived._

 _-Edmar Mednis, international grandmaster of chess_

* * *

Jim gets quickly to his feet when the door slides open. He greets Kodos with a laugh.

"Back so soon? Guess you missed me." He uses his most obnoxious, guaranteed-to-make-Frank-flip-out smirk, leaning casually back against the wall.

Well. That's how it plays out in his imagination, anyway.

The reality is different. He's spent most of the time since Kodos left - hours, certainly, but he really has no way of knowing - sitting on the floor, propped up against the wall. He can't get comfortable. Every breath is a painful, stabbing jab inside his chest. He tries to take shallow breaths, but that leaves him exhausted and a little dizzy. And it's been a long time (almost a day?) since he's had anything to drink. Or eat. His throat is dry and scratchy, his nose aches, and his stomach growls. He's bored and scared and there's nothing to help him pass the time. Here and there he manages to doze off a little, but never for very long. Most of the time he's so restless and uncomfortable he can't stand being in his own skin.

After a while, another source of discomfort demands attention: he's got to pee. Getting up to relieve himself is a painful, slow process. Jim's never paid much attention to his ribs or chest muscles before, but it turns out they're needed _all the fucking time_ whenever he wants to move. He's hoping Kodos and his cronies don't have some kind of infrared camera focused on him, because they'd be treated to a few entertaining minutes of Jim grimacing and gasping and basically making an embarrassment of himself.

Once on his feet, he pisses in the general direction of the door, as far away as possible. He's about to explode anyway, so the stream shoots out long and hard. His abdominal muscles are tight and sore and the broken rib is killing him, so even though there's a satisfying release - _God, it feels good -_ it's mixed with pain.

Afterwards he huddles down again against the wall. Now the room smells like piss. He hopes Kodos will step in it when he comes back.

 _If_ he comes back.

* * *

But Kodos does return not long afterward, and this time he's alone, to Jim's relief. He's not at all sure he can maintain his defiant stance if the beefy guard hits him again. Kodos has something in his hands, but it's not an implement of torture like Jim's been imagining: it's a tray, with a large bottle of water ( _yes please_ ) and a steaming bowl of… something. His nostrils twitch in interest.

He struggles to his feet, because even if he's in no shape to pull off the _Back-so-soon?_ act, it's better to meet his enemy on his feet. Instinctively, he knows this. He winces a little and clutches at the wall for support, but that can't be helped.

"What a pungent, disgusting smell." Kodos rolls his eyes, looking mildly repulsed. "Only three hours in the dark, and you're already reduced to this."

"What did you expect me to do, raise my hand and ask permission to use the bathroom?" It comes off a little too defensive, but the fact is, Jim's not happy he's been reduced to peeing all over the floor like a little kid who can't hold it.

And it's been more than three hours. Kodos playing mind games with him. ( _Or maybe not. How can he know how much time has passed?_ )

"I brought you something to eat and drink." Kodos carefully sets the tray on the floor by the door-about two meters away, just out of range of Jim's piss spray-and picks up the water bottle. Jim's gaze is fixed on him as he opens the bottle and takes a long, luxurious drink. He can only imagine how delicious the water would taste against his parched and swollen throat.

Kodos sets the bottle down again on the tray. To Jim's dismay, now it's only about two-thirds full. "I'm sure you're thirsty. And hungry too. You look like you've lost weight, Jim. I suppose it's been hard, making do with stolen leftovers and moldy bits of old bread."

"Not as hard as watching you kill all those people."

"A necessary evil. Hard times call for hard decisions. 'What nature does blindly, slowly and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly. As it lies within his power, so it becomes his duty to work in that direction.' Sir Francis Galton." He sets the bowl down on the floor, too. It smells like… stew, maybe. Jim can see chunks of vegetables floating in some kind of thick broth.

Reluctantly, he raises his eyes back up to glare at Kodos. "So I guess you think it was your duty to murder all those people, huh? You were being _kind_ ," he snarls. "Remember what Richard Feynman said? You asked me to read him, too. 'We know from experience that the truth will come out.'"

Kodos raises a surprised eyebrow. "Touché, my boy. I admire your spirit. And I'm not covering up the truth. I've told you exactly why I did what I did."

"Because you're going to kill me."

"Eventually. Yes."

Jim swallows. Kodos says it so calmly, like Jim's death is a foregone conclusion, as if his feelings on the matter are irrelevant. He squashes the urge to plead, to cry, to lash out; none of that will do any good, he can tell. Instead, he tries to find a matching apathy in his response. "So… why bring me food?" He looks away and shrugs. "Let's just get it over with."

"Not so fast, little rebel. As I told you earlier, you're going to tell me where you've been hiding Tom Leighton - "

"I'm not gonna tell you anything!"

" - and until then, you'll need to stay alert and alive. And yes, you _will_ tell me. About the boy, and about everything else. You won't be able to stop yourself."

An involuntary shiver runs through him. He wants to object again, to protest, but Kodos sounds so sure of himself. What does the man have planned for him? It must be something terrible.

Jim squints up at the scientist, with his straight-backed posture and well-groomed clothes, and can only imagine what a contrasting picture he must make. He's thin, filthy and unkempt, wearing stolen clothes that are a little too big. The hours alone in the room, with his pain and his hunger, have leached most of the fight out of him, and his pride's taken a nose dive too.

"What are you going to do to me?" he blurts out. He regrets the words right after they leave his mouth, but he can't take them back. And he's desperate to know.

There's a gleam of satisfaction in Kodos' steady gaze, as if he senses how scared Jim is. "Nothing. You're going to do it to yourself."

"Why do you care so much about Tommy, anyway? He's just five years old!"

"He's a loose end, a potential witness to events he can't possibly understand. But he means nothing to me personally." He waves a hand dismissively. "He is a pawn in this game, as you are."

 _A pawn._

Something inside Jim jolts into overdrive as the word breaks through his hopelessness.

Crap. He's forgotten they're playing chess.

It's all tactics, he realizes. The beating, the smell of the stew, the insults, even the suggestion that Jim's going to cave in and tell him everything. Kodos is just trying to intimidate him. And it's working. They're playing a game, but Jim's acting like Kodos has already won.

It's a shift in perspective that changes everything. Because if the all-powerful Governor is investing so much effort into trying to psych him out, then he must think Jim, or Tommy, is some kind of threat. But why? Tommy doesn't know anything, and Jim's already sent off his message with the memo, so -

 _And yes, you will tell me. About the boy, and about everything else._

In a flash, he gets it. Kodos is rattled.

Jim memorized Dr. Mendez' paper, and Kodos wasn't expecting that. He knows Jim's smart and he had access to the research data; now he must be worried Jim's memorized something else incriminating ( _but he hasn't_ ) or overheard something. That's why he didn't just kill him on the spot. He wants to know what Jim knows.

So Kodos really _doesn't_ care about Tommy; he just wants to know where Jim's been hiding so he can see if there's any other damning evidence there. Another notepad, maybe. And he doesn't want anybody to discover it accidentally. ( _Like Starfleet. Because they're coming. His mom has to come._ )

Well, two can play at this game. If Kodos thinks Jim's a threat, that's good. He can build on that.

In the meantime, Kodos is talking, and Jim turns his attention back to his opponent.

"What am I going to do to you? I'll tell you. The silence and the darkness will work their charms on you, my dear Jim. Oh, I know you're defiant now. You're probably convinced you can hold out, just on the strength of your hate. But the solitary mind is a fragile thing. Humans crave sensory stimulation. Without it, we fall into the void, and rather unpleasantly, I'm afraid. Isolation changes our perceptions, weakens our hold on reality, makes us restless and desperate. We hallucinate. We become emotionally vulnerable. Suggestible. Easily manipulated. At that point, you'll simply reveal what you know about Tom Leighton. I won't even have to hurt you."

Not an attractive picture, Jim admits to himself, and probably even true. But it's time for a counter-attack. He keeps a tight hold on his fear and takes a deep breath.

Oops. He gives a little cry as the pain in his rib flares up again. _Owww_.

Once he has his breath back under control, he tries again. "That won't matter. Tommy will be long gone by then. In fact, he's probably moved on already."

Kodos shakes his head. "A child that young can't hide on his own. He'll need food and shelter, and you won't be there to provide it. He'll starve, or he'll surrender on his own."

"I don't think so," Jim says, putting as much conviction as he can into his words. "I've got a couple of hideouts. With food stashed away for him. He'll be okay until Starfleet arrives."

"So you will reveal those places as well."

"Maybe." Jim shrugs. "If I can think of them all when I'm hallucinating."

"We'll find the boy, and he'll tell us everything. Children break easily."

 _Goddamn bastard._ He's suddenly furious again. "You know what, Dr. Kodos? You can't win. Maybe you can find a five-year-old and _break_ him, and you can lock me up in this room until I lose it, but you'll can't cover this up forever."

"The colony is stronger, and we've planted new crops. The revolution has been successful. And I have been in contact with Starfleet, after your little prank. I explained to them that there was a rift within the colony, and half the colonists left. We haven't heard from them since, so perhaps they've gotten lost in the wilderness. Or maybe some other tragedy has befallen them. They're no longer our concern."

"Someone will come looking for them. The Federation will have to investigate. Starfleet - "

"Starfleet is bound by Federation law to respect the independent government of its colonies. They won't be coming."

Jim feels sick, as if he's been punched in the stomach again. "You're lying. I don't believe you."

"Don't hold out hope that your mother will swoop in and save you, my boy. It won't happen."

This has to be just another tactic, it's not true. ( _But oh God, what if it is?_ )

"Maybe it's too late for me, then," he says stubbornly, "but you can't get away with this. Somebody's gonna find out the truth." An idea strikes him, and he curls his lips into a cold smile. "I'm the lab rat, remember? I took a bunch of data chips from the lab, and they're all loaded with the same information that was on the notepad. And they're hidden all over Tarsus. Data chips are small. You can hide 'em in the back of a closet. Or under a cushion." He furrows his brow as if he's thinking hard, then shakes his head. "I was in lots of houses, I probably don't even remember them all. Sooner or later somebody's gonna find one and read what's on it. Maybe they already have!"

Kodos looks at him coldly for a moment. "Perhaps. Or perhaps not. At any rate, you'll tell me all about them over the next few days." He looks down at the floor, at the open bottle of water and the bowl of stew, then sweeps his foot at the tray, toppling them over. "Enjoy your meal."

The door shuts behind him, and Jim's left in darkness.

And then slowly, painfully, he stretches out as far as he can on his stomach, sliding along the floor through the puddle of urine and water, blindly stretching out his hands until he reaches the food.

He laps it all up from the gritty floor like a dog.


	9. The Men on the Chessboard

**A/N:** It's been about nine months since I've updated, and I truly apologize. I haven't abandoned this story.

This is a difficult chapter with disturbing content. It contains the physical abuse and torture of a minor (lots of hurt, no comfort) so please be advised.

The title is from Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit":

 _When the men on the chessboard_

 _Get up and tell you where to go_

 _And you've just had some kind of mushroom_

 _And your mind is moving low_

 _Go ask Alice_

 _I think she'll know_

* * *

After Jim finishes lapping up the spilled meal from the floor, he crawls back to the wall and waits.

Nothing happens for a long time. His eyes are wide open in the dark, and the room's so quiet his ears start to ring. He sings a little, at first. His voice is barely a hoarse whisper, and he can't carry much of a tune. But it's better than silence.

Then his mind starts to drift.

He imagines his mother bursting in through the door, eyes blazing in fury, phaser leveled on him until she realizes it's him. _Oh Jim… thank God!_ Her voice is shaky, cracked with worry.

 _Mom. I knew you'd come._ A wan, relieved smile. He doesn't say he's given up on being rescued, doesn't mention Kodos' mind games. Kodos is a liar anyway.

 _Got anything to eat, maybe? Room service here's been pretty bad._ In his fantasies, he always keeps his cool and has a smart comeback. Never breaks down.

He wonders if his mother would throw her arms around him, if she found him now. Probably not. She's always been fastidious, never liked getting her hands dirty. And Jim is really disgustingly grimy. His clothes are smeared with bits of food and they reek of urine. His hair's greasy and his scalp itches; he wouldn't blame his mother for not wanting to touch him.

So he keeps the scene playing out in his head realistic. His mom helps him up, caresses his cheek, looks him over from head to toe with concern written all over her face. It's enough.

 _M'ok, Mom. But we've gotta go find a friend of mine. He's waiting for me._

When they find Tommy, he jumps into Jim's arms and hugs him as hard as he can. It hurts but Jim doesn't mind. He deserves the pain anyway.

* * *

"184," he whispers. "1610. Uh…" This is such a stupid problem, 23 times 78, what's the matter with him? He focuses again, draws the numbers in gleaming white on the pitch-black canvas of the room, starts multiplying. Another pause. "1694… no. 1794."

* * *

"Wake up. Come on now." A woman is kneeling next to him, and he blinks at her in confusion. He has a split second of ecstatic relief ( _Mom!_ ) but no, the hair's wrong and the voice is too heavy. It's not her.

It's Ruth Voigt. She looks just about the same as when he and Tommy were at her house that night: the disapproving curl of her lips, the sharp look in her eyes. Her appearance in his little cell is so bizarre he can't figure out whether she's real or not. Crap, has he started hallucinating already?

"What… why are you…"

She's holding a bottle up to his lips. "Drink up."

The first sip of fresh, cool water is so delicious and soothing it shoves all his suspicious thoughts away. His right hand curls around the bottle, but shakes so much that Ruth has to help him steady it.

"Brought you something to eat, too," Ruth tells him, not sounding particularly pleased about it. He gets to eat the stew while it's still in a bowl this time, with a spoon, not spilled all over the floor. She watches him gulp down the food, frowning as he swipes his finger around the sides of the bowl to swipe up the last bit of sauce and then licks the finger clean. Her gaze is a strange blend of pity and disgust, but the whole situation is so surreal he doesn't really care.

She takes the bowl and spoon back from him, then takes a few steps back to stand near the door. Jim gives a little cynical laugh at the way her nostrils flare and her nose wrinkles. He knows he smells pretty bad. Maybe she'll puke.

"What're you doing here, Mrs. Voigt?" he asks, although he's pretty sure he knows.

"The Governor asked me to talk to you."

Of course he did. "Why?"

"You _know_ why," she scoffs. "Varda's little boy, Tommy."

Oh God. He remembers his instructions to Tommy. _If it's an emergency, and you're out of food, then you can go to the Voigts' house and they'll take care of you._ Maybe Tommy went to them, believing Jim's promise that he'd get help, and-his heart plummets-the Voigts had gone straight to Kodos.

He drops the cynical mask and looks up at her. She was kind to Tommy once, wasn't she? "Don't hurt him. Please. He's just a little boy."

She huffs. "You're the one who's hurt him."

"No! I took care of him. I kept him safe."

"You should've sent him to Eli and Varda like we told you to do! But you were bullheaded and selfish, and look where you've ended up."

He can only shake his head at how deluded she is. "I did my best for him. I got him food!"

"No. You've been hiding him, and you need to tell the Governor where he is."

From what she's saying, Jim can't figure out whether they've got Tommy or not. "Why should I tell you?" he asks carefully. "He's just fine where he is. You don't want to help him, you'll just turn him over to Kodos."

"That's not true, boy. A child should be with his mother and father."

"They're _dead,_ " he hisses. "I _told_ you what happened at the plaza. Stop fooling yourself!"

Her expression tightens. "Stop spreading those evil lies. He'll be taken to his parents and that's where he belongs. Not hiding in some filthy barn, never going outside! It's not healthy and you know it!"

He's suddenly covered in a cold sweat. "You've seen him, haven't you?" he asks, dreading her answer. "You know where he's been hiding."

"If I knew where he was, d'you think I'd be in here talking to you?" she snaps. " _You_ need to tell _me_ where he is." But Jim's watching her carefully, and he sees the way Ruth breaks off eye contact, just for a split second, looking down and away. _Guilt_. "Course I haven't seen him," she adds belatedly, as if remembering she hasn't really answered Jim's question.

Jim feels dizzy, like he's not getting enough air. He can hardly get the words out. "You turned him in. He came to you for help, didn't he, and you-"

"We obeyed the law! We did the right thing." She purses her lips self-righteously. "Poor thing could hardly stand on his own two feet when he arrived. You'd left him all alone for two days, he said."

Jim cringes inwardly. ( _You can't go away, Jim! You promised to take care of me!_ ) "I didn't abandon him, I was - "

"He was half-starved and scared out of his wits! You should be ashamed of yourself, if you're even capable of feeling anything! I fed him and gave him a bath, found him something to wear."

"And then brought him to the Governor."

"Amos is in the militia. He took care of it."

Jim just slumps back against the wall, defeated. "Just go away. Please."

Ruth looks at him unsympathetically. "You're in a pile of trouble, boy. You need to tell the Governor what he wants to know. Do the right thing now, and maybe you can still join Varda and Eli in the new settlement."

He turns away, ignoring her until she eventually leaves.

Enveloped again in the darkness, he cries, as silently as he can.

* * *

It's impossible to tell how much time has passed since Ruth left. He sleeps in short, uncomfortable spurts. He dedicates one corner of his little cell (or at least as far away as his ankle cuff will let him reach) for bodily waste and then hunkers down on the other side of the room. He gets used to the smell.

He tries to strategize, but it's getting increasingly harder. He tries to imagine an optimistic scenario in which Tommy is still alive, maybe even being held in a room right near Jim's, but there's really no reason for Kodos to keep around a five-year-old who was supposed to be _culled_. Pity and compassion aren't part of the equation. The Governor won't waste resources on a little boy... unless he's planning to use him as some kind of leverage against Jim.

He doesn't want to think about that.

He counts backwards from 1,000 by sevens. Names all 62 U.S. states and the 252 countries alphabetically. (He can only think of 221.) Draws all the constellations he can think of with his fingers on the grimy floor. Lists Federation Presidents and members. Names every single inhabitant of Riverside, going house by house.

* * *

Something startles him out of a sound sleep. His eyes snap open and his heart is hammering, but he can't figure out what's happening. The room is still pitch black, but there's a faint rustling to one side, and a muffled sound-someone _breathing?_ -on the other.

He pushes himself up to a sitting position, bracing his back against the wall, holding his arms defensively in front of him. He strains to hear, eyes wide open but seeing nothing.

Footsteps. On either side. "Who's there?" he blurts out. "What do you want?"

Something hard, cold, and thin, like a wooden cane, caresses his left cheek. He flinches away, trying to avoid it, but the cane follows him, tracing lightly under his jaw, around his ear, teasing along the nape of his neck.

Jim's blind in the dark, but whoever's holding that rod obviously can see his every move. His heart beat ratchets up further. "What're you -"

He breaks off when a second thin cane pokes him just under the ribs on his right side. "Stop it," he grunts out, but the instrument jabs again, a little higher up, right over his cracked rib. He cries out in pain, trying to scuttle away, but the rods follow him, gently stroking his hair on the one side and administering a stinging _thwack_ to his thigh on the other.

They continue like that for a few minutes, alternately teasing him and slapping at him, impersonal and silent. Jim can feel himself edging into panic. He knows this is some kind of mind fuck that's meant to break down his resistance to the main event, whatever that is. But he can't collect his thoughts enough to figure out what to do. Every few seconds, one of the rods touches him, invading his shattered sense of personal space and keeping him constantly on the defensive. He can't anticipate where the next touch is going to come from, whether it's going to tease or sting, stroke or poke, and the combined effect is terrifying.

 _Get a grip_ , he tells himself firmly. _It's just a little stick. You're not really hurt. Frank's switch hurt worse than this._

"Hey, I get the idea, guys," he says, channeling Sam's smartass tone. "I've been a - _ow! -_ bad boy. Now ease up already and let me get back to my nap."

A stinging slap on his fingertips, splayed out in front of him in a futile attempt to protect himself, sends fire raging up his hands. He tucks his hands instinctively into his armpits, but that leaves him open to a set of vicious jabs to his sides.

"You're a real pair of heroes, aren't you. Beating up a chained-up kid who can't see! Fuck off!"

The only answer he gets is a solid whack to his cheek.

"Enough!" he grits out desperately. "What do you want from me?"

To his surprise, the guards pause. "You had enough, kid?" the one on his left asks. His voice is almost gentle. "You sure?"

"Yeah, I get the point," Jim says bitterly. "You're stronger than me. There's two of you. You've got nightvision and a couple of sticks. Go give yourselves a medal."

"Sorry, kid," the other one says, not sounding sorry at all. "That was just the warm-up. _This_ is the fun part."

Without warning, Jim's flipped onto his stomach and held in place by the two men. His first thought is a horrified _please not again_ , but they don't seem to be interested in fucking him. His wrists are seized and held together, pushed into the small of his back while the men climb on top of him, using their weight to hold him immobilized and prone. One of the men kneels on the back of his knees, pressing them painfully into the hard floor. His heels are pushed together, the bare soles of his feet pointing up. It's a strange, awkward position.

He hears the whistle of the cane before he feels it, and suddenly there's a searing pain along the arches of both feet. He barely has time to suck in his breath before the instrument comes down again, exactly on the same spot. The third strike makes a stinging burn that radiates through his feet and shoots up his ankles.

"Stop!" he manages to yell. "Let me up!"

"We're just getting started."

The strokes fall over and over, and each time the pain seems to intensify without relief.

By the tenth stroke, Jim's crying out with each one, and by the thirtieth, he's screaming. Sobbing. Begging for it to stop or for them to hit him somewhere else. It's such an acute, localized pain he can't escape from it, as if the nerve endings that are usually protected and coddled by his shoes are hypersensitized.

It lasts forever.

* * *

By the time they stop, his throat is so raw his screams can't even be heard. His face is a wet mess of snot and tears and he can hardly gulp in air.

The guards get to their feet, allowing Jim to huddle into himself, shaking and wheezing.

"The Governor told us to tell you," one of the men says, "that unless you give him a list of everywhere you left the data chips, you can consider this just a taste of what's coming."

There's a brief flash of light from the corridor as the door swishes open and closed.

He's left alone again in the dark, whimpering, miserable and exhausted.

* * *

"Jim, wake up. Jim, c'mon, why are you still asleep? Get up, we have to go!"

Oh shit, it's Tommy. Jim squints at him, bleary and disoriented, trying to see him in the darkness. "What? Tommy, what are you doing here? You need to hide. Hurry!"

"Not without you. Not again." Jim doesn't have to see Tommy's face to know he's got that familiar, stubborn twist to his mouth, that angry set of his shoulders.

"Listen, buddy, I can't go anywhere," Jim tries to explain. "My feet… I got hurt and I can't walk. You have to go by yourself." His feet are throbbing, hot and swollen. There's no way he'll be able to put any weight on them.

"Is that why you didn't come back to me? I was really mad at you, Jim."

"I know. I know. I was trying to get us some help but it didn't work."

"No. You're a liar!" Tommy shouts. "You didn't want to stay with me! You thought it was too much work to take care of me. You wanted to run away and leave me behind."

"No," Jim says, taken aback. How can Tommy know that? "It was just that one time and I didn't mean it, Tommy. I came back to you."

Tommy's tone turns accusing and angry. "You're not really a secret agent. You're just a stupid kid. Look at you, lying on the floor waiting for someone to rescue you! Nobody's coming."

"That's not true!" ( _Or maybe it is_.) "I had a plan and I sent my mom a message. I told Starfleet. She'll come…"

"Maybe." Tommy sounds so cynical, more cynical than a five-year-old should be able to sound. "Maybe she won't believe you. Maybe she's too busy to come. Or maybe she'll just be too late."

Jim feels the irrational urge to push the boy away, to get him to shut up somehow. But Tommy's just saying out loud things Jim's already been thinking for days. "Maybe it's too late for me," he agrees sadly, "but you can still get away. You need to leave. Now. Go hide!"

"Where?"

Anywhere but here. "You're a secret agent, remember? You have to find your own hiding place."

"I can't find one by myself!" Tommy whines. "If you can't come with then I'm staying here too."

"You can't stay here. It's dangerous. How did you get in here, anyway?"

"The Governor," Tommy says, and Jim feels his stomach clench. "He wanted me to talk to you."

"No, that can't be," Jim murmurs.

None of this makes any sense. Is Tommy part of some elaborate set-up, another manipulation to get Jim to talk? "I don't know anything! I don't! Tommy, get out of here. Please."

"The chips," Tommy says. "You have to tell me where they are. Then you can leave."

Jim turns his back to Tommy and lays back down. "Go away. It's not really you. I don't believe you."

Tommy doesn't come back. It's a small comfort.

* * *

A long, long time after that, Kodos returns, holding a water bottle.

At first Jim's a little suspicious, unsure if it's another hallucination. But the lights are back on, and they're so bright and sharp that Jim's fairly sure this is really happening.

Jim's hand shakes so badly when Kodos hands him the water bottle he has to prop it on his knees, steadying it with both hands. The water is perfect, soothing and cool.

"You look decidedly worse for the wear," Kodos tells him.

 _Fuck you._ "Really? Oh, right, forgot to comb my hair this morning. Didn't know you were coming to visit."

Kodos gives him a small appreciative nod. "You do have spunk, my boy. But then, many sociopaths are charming and intelligent like yourself."

Jim rolls his eyes. "I guess that's a compliment, coming from you."

Kodos steps carefully over the puddles of urine, pristine and composed as always… and yet, Jim thinks, his posture looks tense. He's half-turned toward the door, not facing Jim straight on, and his head is cocked slightly to the side as if he's listening for something.

"Merely a statement of fact. You've been quite entertaining, to say the least."

"Yeah," Jim snorts, "I bet you had fun listening to your goons beat on me."

Kodos shrugs. "Merely a means to an end."

"What now? Did you come in just to insult me? Cause that's a little lame, even for you."

Kodos fixes him with a piercing gaze. "It's showtime, my boy. Time to speak up. You'll tell me now where those data chips are, or you can go back into the darkness. And I will introduce you to even more creative ways of making you scream."

Jim swallows. There's got to be a way out of this, he thinks. There's Terrible Option One: he can refuse to talk, and get tortured and starved some more before he's killed. Terrible Option Two: he can admit there never were any data chips in the first place, and then Kodos will probably kill him (he hopes it'll be quick, at least).

Neither option is looking attractive at this point.

He's not sure why he's bothering to fight back. Tommy's almost certainly dead, his brother's gone, his mother's too far away to do anything and all those colonists are dead, too. But some spark of defiance won't let him quit, even if it's hopeless and futile.

Better to go with option two, he thinks. He's not sure he can handle another round of Kodos' version of fun. "I'm ready to talk."

"A wise choice, and simple enough. You will tell me the location of every data chip you've hidden on Tarsus. And if you lie," Kodos steps forward, looming over Jim, "you will not like the consequences. Don't test me, Jim."

 _Shit_. What the hell is he supposed to do now? There are no data chips. That news is not going to go over well with Kodos. There's got to be something he can say, some way to persuade Kodos to keep him alive, but whatever it is, it's eluding him. He's so hungry he can hardly think straight. The pain and the stress have worn him down, and he's exhausted.

Exhausted... It triggers a memory.

 _When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this-you haven't._ Thomas Edison.

Whoa.

He's not sure why his subconscious has dredged up that quote, but it sends a jolt of adrenaline through him... and an inkling of an idea.

"I lied before," he blurts out, trying not to flinch at the way Kodos narrows his eyes. "I didn't actually hide them all over the colony. The data chips, I mean. They're in one place." The words are out of his mouth before he even realizes what he's saying.

He doesn't have a plan. This is just a stupid stalling tactic. But now that he's said it, he's committed. He has to think of a place, somewhere that makes sense, that won't be easy for Kodos to disprove. The only place that seems likely is their old hiding place, but before he can open his mouth, Kodos beats him to it.

"Don't bother selling me a story about the cow shed where you were hiding because we've already scoured it from top to bottom. I'm warning you: don't lie to me again, boy."

"That wasn't what I was going to say!"

"Then tell me."

Think, think, _think_. But he can't come up with anything that would make sense.

Then Kodos flicks his eyes to the door, in a moment of distraction, and that brief lapse in focus is enough to nudge Jim's brain back online.

"They're in my backpack."

"What backpack?"

He takes a breath to steady his voice. "It's about this big," he spreads his hands apart to demonstrate, "and grey with black shoulder straps. I used it to carry all the things I stole."

"And where is it?"

Jim sighs, as if he's really discouraged. "I had fifteen data chips I was planning to stash all around the colony, in all the houses where I'd been taking things. In drawers, under mattresses, behind the furniture. You know." Kodos nods impatiently. "But then I got stopped before I got a chance to hide them by a couple of your militia guards. _They_ took the backpack."

"Guards? _You_ were apprehended? When did this happen?"

Jim gives him a vague description of the three men: the tall blond, the dark-haired shorter one, and the third whose face he never saw. "By the caves, a couple of weeks ago. They were going to turn me in to you," he supplies helpfully, "but in the end they decided they'd rather just let me go with a warning."

 _Good,_ he thinks as Kodos' face darkens. _Hope you three shitheads get busted and locked up in a dark room just like this one._

Kodos asks him a dozen more questions, trying to get more identifying details on the three men ( _Jim doesn't volunteer anything about their body odor, their breath, or the way they held him down and pushed into him_ ) and the location of the cave. Jim can tell he's infuriated by the idea that Jim was actually in custody and then let go, by his militia, no less.

Kodos gives him one last, assessing look. Jim meets his gaze unflinchingly, hoping desperately Kodos will believe him and he'll be granted a reprieve of a day or two while he rounds up the three negligent ( _rapist_ ) guards and finds the backpack. After that, of course, it's all over for Jim.

"And where are these data chips, exactly?"

"Uh, in the front compartment of the backpack." To his great relief, the Governor nods, accepting his story. For now.

They both hear it at the same time: a high metallic whine coming from somewhere outside.

 _Phaser fire._

Kodos' distraction and tension now suddenly makes sense. _It's Starfleet,_ he thinks. _Please, please, let it be Starfleet._

Kodos curses under his breath and pulls out a sidearm. He freezes Jim with a glare. "Make no mistake, I will be back. We will continue our conversation."

Jim nods.

Kodos opens the door just enough to slip through into the corridor, leaving Jim staring after him, chained to the wall.

* * *

Minutes later, he's being released from the ankle cuff. A red-shirted Starfleet security officer is calling for a med transport and asking his name.

"Tell Commander Kirk we have her son," she says, and then to him, "Don't worry. She's on her way. You're going to be all right."

Jim desperately wants to believe her naive reassurance. But he doesn't think he's ever going to be all right.


	10. The Broken Places

Chapter: The Broken Places

 **A/N:** It's been a while, I know. Sorry about that. I do appreciate all the comments and requests from readers to continue the story... so the muse is back. Enjoy.

Chapter title is from a quote by Ernest Hemingway:

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places."

* * *

Riverside, Iowa

Eight years later

The bar is noisy and crowded as usual, but Jim's barely aware, focused on the book in front of him. In the corner booth where he's slouched, leaning against the back wall, the lighting is just enough to make out the words on the page.

It's a real book, an antique: _Atlas Shrugged_ by Ayn Rand, the 35th Anniversary Edition, published in 1992. One corner of the paperback cover is torn off and there's a coffee stain on page 482, but overall it's in relatively good condition. (Unfortunately, one of the waitresses knocks his elbow as she's squeezing by his booth, so now there's a splash of Old No. 7 soaking into the binding. But Jim's not concerned about the book's resale value.)

He has a small collection of old books, mostly philosophy and science, with some literature. Nietzche, Sun Tzu, Einstein, Thoreau. 13 books in all, both hardcover and paperback, including this latest one which arrived at the farmhouse three days ago. He's already read it through once and is struggling through it for a second time. It's absurdly long for a novel, elitist, and overly dramatic. Not light reading, although it has some good parts.

He flips open the inside cover to scowl at the inscription.

 _Every man builds his world in his own image... He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice._

It's a quote from the book. Any of the previous owners could have written it, sometime over the past two and a half centuries. The words are innocuous enough: a general piece of advice, or maybe a warning.

But Jim knows the inscription's personal. Meant for him and him alone. If the quote wasn't enough of a clue - _the necessity of choice -_ there's a small slip of paper tucked between pages 278 and 279, like a forgotten bookmark. It's a receipt from Ed's Hovercraft and Body Shop in Riverside, which is where he's been working for the past two months.

He broke out in a cold sweat when he first saw the receipt. Most people use electronic receipts, of course, but Ed has some Amish customers who bring in their kick scooters for repairs, and they use paper. The receipt is made out to Aaron Ropp in Kalona. Jim knows him; he's a quiet, taciturn man with a long grey beard and glasses.

The receipt may be real, but Jim's willing to bet _Atlas Shrugged_ never sat on Aaron Ropp's bookshelf alongside his books on organic farming and the Hardy Boys mysteries.

Somebody, and certainly not Aaron, put the receipt in the book and sent it to Jim. Most likely Jim's secret admirer was watching the shop while Jim was at work, saw Aaron going in and out and lifted the receipt off him.

Every six months or so, he'll get a little present like this out of the blue. An antique book with a covert message, sent for the sole purpose of rattling him. Which it always does. The idea that somebody's following him - observing him, spying on him-never fails to freak him out, to send him into hypervigilance and paranoia.

His mother told him Kodos was killed during the Starfleet raid when Jim was rescued. He doesn't believe it. This book and all the others were obviously sent by Kodos; who else could be doing it? But he can't prove anything. He's never told anyone about the way Rafael Kodos used to mentor him-Jim Kirk, the stupid foster kid who only wanted to be noticed-sending him books and essays to read. He's too ashamed to admit he ever admired the man who engineered the massacre… but Kodos never lets him forget it.

Kodos - if it really is him - never shows his face, just sends the books and, sometimes, an ominous hint that he's been following Jim's movements. The first one he receives is a yellowed, wrinkled photograph of Highland High School from 2065, showing the 100-year anniversary celebration. It's tucked into a copy of _Cosmos_ by Carl Sagan, sent by FedAir in a plain brown wrapper, exactly three months after Jim finally goes back to school. No return address.

The inscription on the inside front cover reads, _Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception. -_ _Carl Sagan._

Jim refuses to go back to Highland after that.

He says he can't stand the boring routine. His mother doesn't pry too deeply. She doesn't know what to do with him after Tarsus. Not even Frank can keep him in line.

Even when he ditches Riverside for the farthest place he can go-a trek in East Asia when he's nineteen-he can't get away. _The Double Helix_ surprises him at a guesthouse in Vietnam and sends him into a tailspin. His nightmares get so bad they kick him out; he's disturbing the other guests.

He drifts here and there but eventually goes back home to the empty farmhouse. Frank is long gone and his mother's returned to her deep space missions, so at least he has a place to live and some solitude. (No one cares if he calls out in his sleep.)

But there's no escaping the shadow that tails him. Every time he reaches a semblance of stability, Kodos reaches out and taps him on the shoulder with unerring timing. It reminds him of himself in that pitch-black room on Tarsus, eyes wide open but blind, defenseless and furious, while two thugs poke and slap him with sticks.

He knows what people think of him, here in Riverside: he's a lazy screw-up, a devastating disappointment to his mother, a borderline alcoholic who can't hold a job. In the last few years he's had a few run-ins with the local cops, arrests for misdemeanors like reckless driving (which he bitterly contested) and disorderly conduct (which he didn't).

He flips through the yellowed pages of the book, working his way through shot after shot of Jack Daniels. He always reads the books cover to cover, obsessively. He memorizes whole passages from them… which is probably exactly what Kodos intends. He's still in Jim's head.

 _If you know the enemy and know yourself_ , Sun Tzu wrote, _you need not fear the result of a hundred battles_.

Jim's not entirely sure Sun Tzu is right on this point.

By the time he stuffs the book into his jacket pocket and sidles up to the snooty cadet ordering the tray of drinks… he's pretty much wasted.

When the first punch connects with his cheekbone, the pain is a relief.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, he's nursing a beer, a pair of tissues stuffed up his nose, waiting to settle things with Captain Christopher Pike, Commandant of Cadets at Starfleet Academy. The adrenaline's gone and so is his buzz. His nose is stuffy and swollen, and the entire left side of his face is throbbing and sore.

He wants nothing more than to be left to his own morose thoughts, but Pike tells him in no uncertain terms _Sit your ass down, kid_ before heading over to the bar to talk to Denny.

Jim can see where this is going. Denny's going to want somebody to pay for the damages, and there's no way he'll stick the Captain with the bill. The Starfleet construction base down the road brings in most of his business.

Great. So Jim'll be forced to cough up his last wages. Maybe Denny'll let him off easy, if Jim agrees never to set foot in the bar again. It's not like it's his favorite hangout. Too many Starfleet cadets, so full of purpose and confidence.

Eventually Pike comes back, settling himself into the chair across from him and giving him an inscrutable stare, like he's sizing Jim up and isn't pleased with what he finds. Jim's been on the receiving end of that kind of look more times than he can count. (Deserved it, too, most of the time.)

Jim gives him a sour look. "Your cadet threw the first punch. Just so you know."

Pike nods in agreement. "So I hear."

"He's got a pretty good right hook. Gonna make a great security officer."

"I'll take that under consideration."

Jim waits for more, but Pike doesn't seem to be in a big hurry to pin the blame on him, or say anything else, for that matter. The pause is becoming awkward. "Guess I'd better settle up with Denny over there…"

Pike shakes his head. "It's been taken care of."

Surprised, Jim inclines his head in appreciation. Wonders will never cease. "Good talk, then. I'm gonna be on my - "

"You know, I couldn't believe it when the bartender told me who you are."

"And who am I, Captain Pike?" Jim tilts his glass up and drains the last of the beer.

"Your father's son."

 _Wrong answer, Captain._ Jim rolls his eyes and calls for another beer, a classic distraction tactic.

Why do people always fixate on his dead father? He has a mother, too. As far as he can tell, he takes after _her_ in every important way. He's got her sharp mind, her disregard for social norms, and her ability to shut people out. Neither of them are above using charm and manipulation to get their way - okay, maybe Jim's charm needs a bit more polish, but he was making headway with the girl before D'Artagnan and the three musketeers butted their way in.

Pike's looking at him earnestly, talking about the _Kelvin_ , and Jim can see where this is going. How fucking original. Pike's not the first one to think of invoking Jim's heroic father to try to set him on the straight and narrow.

It pisses him off. Getting the shit kicked out of him apparently isn't enough of a humiliation; he has to sit through a lecture on how he's a disappointment to his father's legacy. And all this from a guy he's just met.

"Something I admired about your dad… He didn't believe in no-win scenarios."

Jim has to resist the urge to laugh as he pulls the bloody tissues out of his nose. "Sure learned his lesson." _No-win scenario_ , what a sanitized description. They probably taught a unit on it in Advanced Starfleet Tactics. Lecture Five: on strategic collisions and epic martyrdom.

"Well, that depends on how you define winning. You're here, aren't you?"

Yeah, he's alive, all right. Definitely a win. Thanks for the pep talk, Captain.

"You know that instinct to leap without looking, that was his nature too… and in my opinion it's something Starfleet's lost."

Pike says it like he's expecting Jim to care. Like they're just two old Starfleet buddies, bemoaning the fact that the Service is not what it used to be. It's so patently ridiculous Jim shakes his head. "Why are you talking to me, man?"

"Because I looked up your file while you were drooling on the floor."

His half-amused smile drains away. Pike meets his gaze steadily. Jim's heart starts racing and he can feel sweat breaking out along the back of his neck. His file obviously means his Starfleet file. And Jim's rescue from Tarsus, which is supposed to be his private, personal horror, is about to be dragged into this conversation, for reasons he can't fathom. It was just a goddamn bar fight, and _he_ was the one who was attacked and left bleeding on the table, so what the hell?

"My file," Jim says slowly, trying to keep his voice level, "is _my_ business. I don't recall giving you permission to look at it."

Pike just shrugs, unapologetic, as if invading Jim's privacy isn't something to be concerned about.

Enough of this. He stands up. "We're done here."

"No we're not," Pike tells him evenly, fixing his eyes on him like he's just expecting to be obeyed. "Sit down."

And damn it, Jim does. He's not sure why. Maybe it's the military aura of command and self-confidence-Jim's always been a sucker for authority figures-or maybe it's just the fact that the mention of his "file" has thrown him for a loop. He's stuck between fight and flight and his legs are a little shaky.

He sinks back down into the chair and takes a sip of his beer, consciously rearranging his posture and limbs into a semblance of nonchalance. "Whatever. Make it quick."

"Your aptitude tests were off the charts when you were twelve. But your school record's patchy. You never went back for more than a few months, after you came home."

"I don't have to explain my choices to you."

Pike's expression stays maddeningly calm. "All right. But from what I can tell, it looks like you've spent the last few years trying to make yourself a reputation as the only genius level repeat-offender in the Midwest."

Jim looks away. There's no way he could make this guy, with his immaculate uniform and ramrod-straight spine, understand.

"So your dad dies, you get sent off-planet… and then you find yourself in a crisis situation-"

"A _crisis_ situation?" Jim grits out. "Is that what you call it?"

" - and from what I read, you handled yourself well, took responsibility - "

"You have no _idea_ , I don't give a shit what that file says!"

" - and now you're back, and you've got an excuse to do whatever the hell you feel like. Settle for whatever it is you're doing nowadays. Isn't that right?"

"Maybe it is," he seethes. Arrogant asshole. What does he know?

"Or do you feel that you were meant for something better? Something special?"

For a moment, all Jim can do is stare at him, aghast. Rafael Kodos sure didn't think Jim was special; he thought he was a sociopath. "You're way off base - "

"Enlist in Starfleet."

Now he does laugh. This is surreal. " _Enlist_? You guys must be way down on your recruiting quota for the month."

Pike seems oblivious, going on about Jim's father (again), the Federation, Jim's potential, something about a dare. Jim stops listening. If this talk doesn't end soon, he's going to take a swing at Pike. Or maybe start hyperventilating.

His hand curls around the heavy book in the pocket of his jacket. _Atlas Shrugged_ is real, immediate. His cuts and bruises are real. Starfleet is a fantasy.

Pike leaves, finally. Jim lets him have the last word.

But he doesn't go home. Sleep isn't what he needs right now, anyway. His mind is in turmoil and there's no way his dreams will give him any rest.

* * *

He heads out of town on his bike with no particular destination in mind. The dark old roads are empty at this time of night. Most people prefer to take the faster and more efficient commuter lanes, putting their vehicle on autocontrol and relaxing. Safety is a priority.

Not for Jim. He likes the element of danger. He can never fully relax on his motorcycle; one wrong move at high speed and he'll skid out of control. He's always aware of his mortality. And the old highways might be full of potholes and bumps - they're never a priority for state maintenance - but they're open and straight and they seem to go on forever.

The wind rushes by his head as he shifts and accelerates. On any other night he'd be enjoying the smell of the corn in the fields, the thrum of the engine beneath him, but not tonight. The usual exhilaration of the ride is absent.

He replays the conversation with Captain Pike in his mind over and over, unable to soothe the impotent rage. The casual violation of his privacy, the barely-veiled disappointment-who the hell was _Pike_ to be disappointed?-that Jim wasn't living up to his father's legacy… Fuck him.

Pike's an idiot if he thinks Jim can just put Tarsus behind him. He probably heard a lecture on Starfleet-approved post-traumatic reactions and steps to recovery (apparently, going to school and getting a decent job are high on the list) and Jim's not living up to his expectations.

Pike doesn't know that Jim's a member of a very exclusive book club and he's never going to be able to move on.

Fuck his life.

Kodos is still playing chess with him, and at some point, there's going to be a confrontation. It'll come when he's least expecting it. It's the one thing he's sure of. So why make plans, get into a long-term relationship, build a career? There's no point. Better to drink himself into oblivion as often as he can afford to, or find a warm body to fuck. Preferably both.

A sentence from _Atlas Shrugged_ drifts into his mind. _Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach._

Jim knows he isn't a hero, or not much of one, anyway. But his soul might very well be perishing.

In the distance he can see the glow of the starship construction site. God, he'd do anything to get off this godforsaken planet, to get as far away as he could. To have a phaser hooked in his belt and access to the best technology available. Maybe then he'd finally feel safe enough to look to the future.

Maybe Kodos won't be able to follow him into space.

Maybe.

* * *

He shows up the next morning at the Riverside Shipyard just after eight, still in his filthy clothes. Pike's there at the shuttle door, looking nonplussed. "Four years? I'll do it in three," Jim tells him. Nobody at Starfleet Academy, he thinks, is as motivated as he is to get out into the black.

His backpack is a comforting weight over his shoulder as he steps inside. He's only brought the essentials: some clothes, his running shoes, toiletries, and thirteen antique books.


End file.
